You owe Indiana back taxes from 2023 or earlier, and the penalties and interest stacked on top may now be bigger than the tax itself. For a few more days, the state will wipe that entire surcharge away — but only if you act before September 9, 2026.
Indiana's Tax Amnesty 2026 runs from July 15 through September 9, 2026. During that window, eligible taxpayers who pay past-due state taxes in full — or set up a qualifying payment plan — get every related penalty, every dollar of interest, and every collection fee waived. It is the state's first tax amnesty in more than a decade, and the last one is not scheduled. If old Indiana liabilities are sitting on your books, this is the cheapest they will ever be to resolve.
This guide walks through what the program covers, how to check your eligibility, the exact steps to participate before the deadline, the mistakes that can void your waiver, and how to clean up your books once the dust settles.
What Indiana's Tax Amnesty 2026 Actually Offers
Authorized by the General Assembly during the 2025 legislative session, Tax Amnesty 2026 is an eight-week program run by the Indiana Department of Revenue (DOR) in partnership with its collection vendor, United Collection Bureau (UCB). The deal is simple: pay the underlying tax you owe, and the state forgives the add-ons.
Specifically, successful participants receive a waiver of:
- Civil and criminal penalties tied to the eligible liabilities, including late-payment and late-filing penalties
- All accrued interest on those liabilities
- Collection fees added during enforcement
The waiver applies to all listed taxes administered by DOR or Motor Carrier Services — including individual income tax, corporate income tax, sales and use tax, and other listed business taxes — for tax periods ending before January 1, 2024. In practice, that means 2023 and earlier tax years. Current-period obligations are not covered: the program settles old debt, it does not pause anything you owe for 2024, 2025, or 2026.
The state expects the program to bring in roughly $124 million in the coming fiscal year — a sign of how much delinquent liability is sitting out there, and how motivated DOR is to collect the base tax while forgiving the surcharges.
Are You Eligible? Run Through This Checklist
Before you do anything else, confirm you qualify. All of the following must be true:
- You owe Indiana tax for a period ending before January 1, 2024. If your only liabilities are for 2024 or later, amnesty does not apply to you.
- The tax type is one DOR administers. Income, sales, withholding, and other listed state taxes count. Taxes tied to riverboat or racetrack gambling are excluded by statute.
- You did not participate in Indiana's 2005 or 2015 amnesty programs. Prior participation is a hard disqualifier — the state deliberately barred repeat users so the program rewards first-time comers, not serial waiters.
- All of your required Indiana filings are current. You cannot get a waiver on periods you never filed for. If returns are missing, you must file them first (more on that below).
Two pieces of good news: you do not need to be an Indiana resident — out-of-state businesses and individuals with Indiana filing obligations qualify — and you do not need to have received the DOR or UCB notification letter. No letter is required. If you have eligible liabilities and meet the other conditions, you can still participate.
The fastest way to confirm is DOR's eligibility tool inside INTIME, the department's e-services portal, available since mid-May 2026. Log in, and the tool shows whether you carry amnesty-eligible balances. If you received a letter, it includes an Amnesty Case ID you will use when paying or setting up a plan.
How to Participate Before September 9: Four Steps
With only days left in the window, move in this order. Each step depends on the one before it.
Step 1: Pull your full account picture from INTIME
Log in to INTIME and review every period with a balance — not just the ones flagged for amnesty. Print or export the account transcript. You need the complete inventory before you decide anything, because electing amnesty on a partial balance while forgetting another eligible period leaves money on the table.
Step 2: File any missing returns first
This is the step most people get backwards. Amnesty covers assessed liabilities — amounts the state has formally quantified. An unfiled 2022 sales tax return is not yet an assessed balance, so it cannot be folded into your amnesty election until you file the return and the balance posts to INTIME.
The correct workflow is: identify every Indiana period with an unfiled return, prepare and file those returns, wait for the new balances to populate, and only then elect amnesty on the full consolidated balance. Filing takes processing time, and with the window closing September 9, start this today if it applies to you. Skipping straight to payment risks an election that covers only part of your exposure.
Step 3: Pay in full or establish a payment plan inside the window
Between July 15 and September 9, 2026, you must do one of two things, either through UCB at 888-782-5985 or through your INTIME account:
- Pay all eligible liabilities in full. Payment in full during the window is the simplest path — the waiver follows automatically on successful completion.
- Establish an amnesty payment plan. Plans must be set up during the window even though payments extend beyond it. Minimum balance thresholds apply: at least $100 in eligible liabilities for individuals, at least $500 for businesses. Below those thresholds, you must pay in full during the window to earn the waiver. Once established, an amnesty payment plan must be paid off by June 7, 2027 — miss that date and additional penalties can attach to the covered liabilities.
Note that electronic payments can take up to nine days to fully clear, so do not schedule a lump-sum payment for the afternoon of September 9 and assume it lands in time.
Step 4: Confirm enrollment and keep the paperwork
Save your confirmation numbers, the Amnesty Case ID, payment-plan terms, and a copy of the INTIME transcript showing zeroed or plan-covered balances. Store them with the tax year's permanent records. If DOR's systems and your records ever disagree about what was covered, that packet is your proof.
Five Mistakes That Can Void the Deal
Amnesty programs are unforgiving of procedural errors. Watch for these:
Waiting past September 9. The deadline is statutory, not discretionary. DOR has signaled that eligible taxpayers who sit out the program may face additional penalties on qualifying liabilities on top of the ordinary penalty and interest provisions. The surcharge you avoid by acting is real; the one you invite by waiting may be larger than today's.
Electing amnesty before unfiled returns post. As described above, file first, elect second. An election that omits unassessed periods does not protect them.
Defaulting on the payment plan. The June 7, 2027 payoff date is part of the bargain. Calendar every installment, automate the payments, and treat a plan default as what it is: the waiver evaporating. If cash flow tightens mid-plan, contact UCB before you miss — not after.
Ignoring liabilities under appeal or protest. Paying a disputed liability through amnesty can affect your appeal or protest rights for that period. If any balance is under administrative protest or in litigation, get professional advice before including it in your election. Sometimes the right move is to carve the disputed period out and fight it separately.
Assuming the slate stays clean by itself. Amnesty forgives old periods; it does not change your ongoing obligations. DOR expects participants to stay current on all Indiana filing and payment duties going forward — sales tax deposits, withholding remittances, estimated payments. Emerging from amnesty straight into fresh delinquency squanders the reset.
Why Sitting This Out Costs More Than the Tax
It is worth stating the math plainly. Indiana's interest on unpaid tax compounds, failure-to-pay and failure-to-file penalties stack monthly up to steep caps, and collection fees pile on once accounts move to enforced collection. On a liability that has aged since 2022 or 2023, the add-ons routinely approach or exceed the original tax — meaning amnesty can cut your total payoff nearly in half, sometimes more.
Against that, weigh the cost of participation: the base tax (which you owe regardless), plus the administrative effort of filing missing returns and setting up payment. There is no application fee and no downside to checking the eligibility tool. For a business carrying several aged periods — say, unremitted 2022 sales tax plus an underpaid 2023 composite return — the waiver is often the highest-return use of a week's effort available anywhere in the finance function this quarter.
One structural reason to take the program at face value: Indiana barred anyone who used the 2005 or 2015 amnesties. The state is telling you, explicitly, that serial non-filers should not count on another round. Tax policy analysts note the same logic — the older a liability gets, the costlier it is to collect through ordinary enforcement, which is exactly why the state would rather deal now. There is no credible basis for assuming a 2028 or 2030 repeat.
Cleaning Up Your Books After Amnesty
Resolving the tax debt is half the job; recording it correctly is the other half. Sloppy post-amnesty bookkeeping recreates the same fog that let the liabilities age in the first place.
Reconcile INTIME to your general ledger, period by period. For each covered period, tie the DOR transcript balance to the corresponding tax-payable liability account in your books. Write up any unrecorded liabilities your filing catch-up surfaced — those missing returns represent real obligations that should have been accrued all along.
Book the waiver properly. The forgiven penalties and interest were (or should have been) sitting in your accounts as accrued liabilities or expenses. When the waiver is granted, reverse them: debit the liability accounts and credit the corresponding expense or gain account for the period the waiver becomes assured. Do not net the waiver against the tax itself — the tax was always owed, and collapsing the two obscures what actually happened. If the amounts are material, flag the treatment to your CPA before closing the period.
Diary the payment plan like a loan. An amnesty installment plan is a fixed obligation with a hard maturity date of June 7, 2027. Record the full remaining balance as a liability, split current versus long-term portions at year-end, reconcile each debit against the INTIME statement monthly, and set calendar alerts at least a week before every installment. A missed payment does not just incur a fee — it can unwind the waiver.
Fix the process that created the backlog. Aged state liabilities almost always trace to a process failure: sales tax collected but never remitted, withholding deposits skipped during a cash crunch, returns nobody calendared. Separate collected-but-unremitted trust taxes (sales tax, withholding) into their own liability accounts so they can never look like operating cash again, put every Indiana filing on a recurring compliance calendar with an owner and a backup, and review the calendar quarterly. The discipline that keeps you current after amnesty is the same discipline that would have made amnesty unnecessary.
Keep Your Financial Management Organized from Day One
Clearing old tax debt feels good, but staying clear takes a system — one where every liability is visible the moment it arises, not discovered years later with penalties attached. Beancount.io provides plain-text accounting that gives you complete transparency and control over your financial data — no black boxes, no vendor lock-in. Get started for free and see why developers and finance professionals are switching to plain-text accounting.