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Man Underpaid Property Tax by $8.41 County Seized Home, Sold It-Kept Profits
- fuzzfactor 7y agoThis is the original purpose of property tax.
- ping_pong 7y agoThis is a perfect example of why sometimes the Second Amendment is justified. At 83 years old, there's not much stopping him from hunkering down with guns, publicizing how evil the county is, and daring them to take it away from him. What the county did is absolutely evil and all the administrators should be held accountable.
- nothrabannosir 7y agoHe would have died. Others possibly as well. He would not have kept his house. There are cases to make for the second amendment. A single citizen taking the law into his own hands and shooting at cops is not one of them.
- JAlexoid 7y agoActually.... Defending ones' house from government tyranny is one of the most valid reasons for Second Amendment.
- z3ncyberpunk 7y agoBetter than being 83 and homeless? I'll take my death, you can keep that precious 'freedom'
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoDepends on who the cops are. Such action is not unprecedented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoI dunno. That incident pre-dates SWAT and 9/11. Nowadays they could just launch a missile at his house, bulldoze the lot, and sell it to some corp to build a parking lot or a suburb or something.
- tstrimple 7y agoLet's not be hyperbolic here. SWAT doesn't have missiles. They will send a bomb in on a robot and blow you up instead.
- SauciestGNU 7y agoOr drop explosives from a helicopter like the police did to the MOVE compound in Philly.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoThey do have grenade launchers though. Much cheaper than the robot.
- JasonFruit 7y agoFine --- a slow missile.
- nannePOPI 7y agoIf you execute such an order and try to seize the property, you deserve to die if you die in the confrontation. After the Nuremberg trials, "I was just doing my job" is not recognized as an excuse anymore. Now, should the judges, bureaucrats, etc deserve to die too? No, because they don't actually go there and try to seize the property, but they must be put in jail as taking part in the conspiracy to unlawfully get the property of the old man. When bureaucrats and judges will begin to pay, they will stop doing stupid stuff against weak people.
- ping_pong 7y agoI never said shoot at cops. Just hunker down with a big sign that says "OAKLAND COUNTY IS STEALING MY HOUSE OVER $8.41". I guarantee the media would cover this.
- mywittyname 7y agoWhat are you expecting him to do with those guns? Who are you expecting to show up when some guy barricades himself in his house with a bunch of guns? I've witnessed a standoff first-hand. The police will show up and attempt to take down the person in question. They don't just hang around with their thumbs up their ass. They have riot shields, body armor, and they storm in from every direction with 20+ guys. SWAT does not fuck around.
- chmod775 7y agoApparently SWAT and police are stupid and incompetent beyond belief then, if they are willing to endanger lives over eight dollars and when the alternative is just walking away and taking that money from his bank account. Maybe they still make those lemon-activated thinking-hats from the hitchhikers guide? Adding those to the issued gear might help.
- JAlexoid 7y agoIt's not about $8. It's about challenging their authority. Don't be deceived - there are many authoritarians wearing uniforms.
- jacobwilliamroy 7y agoMaybe he could get his way with a gun, but then he'd have to carry around a gun all the time. And then what happens when the friends and lovers of the people he's hurt catch him without his gun? Or what if they get an even better gun? Big gun diplomacy is a problem, not a solution... unless you're an arms dealer.
- abtinf 7y agoThe idea that the second amendment exists to protect us from a tyrannical government has never manifested in reality. What history has demonstrated is that the only time second amendment advocates have shown any willingness to defend their rights is over the question of gun ownership. Slavery? Military conscription? No problem. Regulations in the 19th century? Income taxes in the early 20th? No problem. Farming regulations? Corn quotas? Gold seizures? No problem. Price and wage controls? Wealth redistribution? Healthcare centralization? Tariffs? No problem. TSA? NSA? Free speech zones? Warrantless wiretapping? No problem. If/when gun confiscation happens, I doubt there will be any resistance.
- boring_twenties 7y agoI'm no lawyer but this absolutely has to be unconstitutional. A more egregious example of unreasonable search and seizure is difficult to imagine.
- sheepstrat 7y agoThis feels like the kind of case that will be appealed up until the law is struck down.
- loopz 7y agoPerfect case to hold the administration personally accountable.
- bdcravens 7y agoBy “administration”, are you referring to the office of the POTUS? I bash that office as much as any, but this is a state level issue, and even at the national level, it would be a judicial, not an executive, branch concern.
- colechristensen 7y agoNotice you're assuming the parent's reference and then saying it is wrong.
- rtkwe 7y agoSeems like a great case to get that law struck down at least getting the seizure reversed/compensated. Seizing an entire home and pocketing all proceeds of sale over tiny debt seems like a perfect case for the seizure being unreasonable.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoIf they allowed everyone to underpay property tax by $8.41, it would add up to far more than the proceeds on the single sale.
- wolco 7y agoMost places have the opposite where the city would get the 8.00 and the owner get the remaining amount. Which would mean the city wouldn't bother.
- JAlexoid 7y agoThe city, county or any other government institution is not supposed to profit off this kind of affairs at all. Government must be funded by taxes and taxes alone, all excess collections must be returned to taxpayers unconditionally. Civil asset forfeiture and this kind of laws just make racketeers out of government officials. And yeah - $8 isn't a good reason for seizing someone's house, when they can easily get a small claims court to summarily get that $8.
- JackFr 7y agoA bank foreclosing on a mortgage is only entitled only to the value of the money owed. Those laws are structured specifically to avoid the perverse incentive created by being able to receive $60,000 on an $8.00 debt.
- Retric 7y agoIn this case not being worth their time is a good thing. They can always asses interest and penalties until it’s worth their time prepossessing a home. But, when someone is making a good faith effort it’s crazy to escalate this far.
- Miner49er 7y agoI'm gonna play devil's advocate and say this is actually not a bad thing. > In each case, the property owners alleged that they were not given sufficient warning about their delinquent taxes. In some cases, that's because county officials were mailing notices to unfinished homes or properties without permanent residents. In others, like Rafaeli's case, the notices were delivered to tenants who failed to pass along the information to their landlord, mistakenly believing that the county would inform the landlord separately. They were warned. If you ignore the warnings, what else is the county supposed to do? If there's no punishment for not paying taxes, nobody would pay taxes. Seizing assets is better then putting someone in jail, because it actually makes taxpayers money and it hurts the people not paying in a fair way. If you don't live at a house enough to check the mail and you aren't paying property taxes on it, then it's actually good for society to give that house to someone who needs it and will pay taxes on it. This type of thing can reduce homelessness. Finally landlords have no excuse for this, they're making money off these properties, it's similar to not using them. If you're gonna be making a profit off of collecting rent I think the least to ask is for you to properly pay your taxes.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rwmurrayVT 7y agoLess than $10 from miscalculating interest owed and the subsequent bills do not show any outstanding balance? That's atrocious. They seize the property and keep the entire proceeds of the auction. That's outlandish. It goes on to say in the article that the properties often go on to speculators who rent them or leave them empty.
- Miner49er 7y agoFair enough, that's a case of were it messed up because the guy was trying to pay his taxes and made an honest mistake. But I don't think the whole law is bad because of a couple of mistakes. There should probably be a system to stop seizures from happening over honest mistakes, but the law itself seems like a good idea. We don't get rid of murder laws because sometimes we convict the wrong people, for example.
- polalavik 7y agoWhy do we have to take a stab at how much we owe in taxes when it’s known by tax collectors?
- JAlexoid 7y agoBecause it's a racket. Both government and the CPA cronies are complicit. Pure and simple. Rational countries disallow these kinds of activities, and give you all the information about you that they have collected. But Intuit would lose a lot of $79 customers.
- tstrimple 7y agoIn this case? Because they can then seize your property and make more money. In cases like income tax? Because tax prep companies spend money to ensure congress doesn't put them out of business. Perverse incentives abound.
- Domenic_S 7y agoThe IRS has no idea how much you've donated to Goodwill, paid in medical expenses, or any other number of deductions.
- JAlexoid 7y agoI'll grant you that they don't know your donations and major tax deductibles. But your medical expenses would have to be very high before you would even report them to IRS in the first place. Do you directly spend more than 10% of your gross income on medical expenses? No? Then you can't deduct them. In addition, most medical expense reporting is already reported to IRS. They literally get your whole pay stub information - gross pay, withholdings, 401k, medical deductions, pre-tax expenses, etc... PS: I ran a company in one of the "high regulation" EU countries and the amount of tax prep I do today in USA jumped from 30 min per year for myself and 3 employees to 30h per year myself! Oh... I didn't have to pay anything to file my tax documentation online and I got my estimated tax docs pre-filled by the tax authorities.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
- Dirlewanger 7y agoHoAs are no different with their cancerous rentseeking behavior. Here in TX, they can place a lien on your house if you don't pay your dues.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- all_blue_chucks 7y agoHOA dues pay for the shared parts of your property. Of course they can seize your house if you don't pay for it. It's when they try to seize your house over nonsense like minor rule infraction that they become awful.
- matwood 7y agoHOAs can't seize anyone's house. They actually have very little power to collect. A lien doesn't mean much until the person goes to sell, and then it just has to be paid prior to a sale.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoThe last home I had that was part of an HOA, they had the right to evict and rent your home out to recoup any fines and penalties (Illinois). They could also foreclose on the property.
- matwood 7y agoThe most I have seen an HOA able to do is foreclose for extreme late payment. By then the bank is typically foreclosing so it's cheaper for the HOA to wait. Plus, the HOA doesn't want foreclosures in the neighborhood as it brings down property values. It's just easier to wait for the homeowner to sell on their own. An eviction from a property where the HOA is not the owner (typical detached SFH) is not something I have seen. It also wouldn't make a lot of sense because 1 month of rent in my neighborhood would cover years of HOA dues. A shared condo environment is different because what is owned by the owner and the community is more intermingled.
- yalok 7y agoA reminder for whoever has rental properties - use your permanent address or a PO Box for all of your mail related to rental property... it’s dangerous to rely on tenants to pass mail to you - they may simply forget.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoYou want to use a commercial mail processor who will scan all incoming mail and electronically deliver it to you. As a landlord, you will also want to set calendar reminders to follow up with any government agency where recurring monies are due to confirm receipt. You want those confirmations in writing whenever possible (ie paper trail). Disclaimer: Landlord, business owner, automate all the things, all that jazz.
- lotsofpulp 7y agohttps://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.acti...
- toomuchtodo 7y agoOnly gets you the front scans of the pieces, not the contents. Also only shows in transit (doesn't enumerate the facility where the scan was taken or the data/time of the capture), not delivery confirmation if the sender did not pay for and request that service. Great start though, I hope USPS expands on it for contents. I'd rather give them my money instead of a third party processor.
- e1ven 7y agoI'd love to hear who you use for your mail processor. I have tried a couple of them over the years, but haven't always had the best results.
- kd3 7y agoWhen you have to pay fees to be able to hold on to your property, it's not your property. You're paying the government mafia for the privilege to hold on to what they view as their property. It is extortion and ultimately robbery as in this case.
- gok 7y agoI'm sure the politicians responsible will campaign that they "stood up to a tax evading landlord."
- Clubber 7y agoThey were thinking of the children.
- nsfyn55 7y agoYah Reason.com? really? The same rag that towed the line to destroy net neutrality? find me a better source and I'll buy it. https://reason.com/tag/ajit-pai/ https://reason.com/tag/ajit-pai/
- dredmorbius 7y agoNB: toed the line. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/toe-the-line https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/toe-the-...
- nsfyn55 7y ago@@
- lonelappde 7y agoHere's one:https://www.povertylaw.org/clearinghouse/articles/Remedies https://www.povertylaw.org/clearinghouse/articles/Remedies
- nsfyn55 7y agoAnd where does it talk about the plight of this poor, poor libertarian, law abiding man that lost his home because of an $8.41 oversight? When a story is legit it gets picked by multiple outlets. When it gets picked up by reason.com they tell you about the seizure but they conveniently omitthe part where he dug his heels in over this $8.41 payment and refused to settle his bill for 2 decades. Threw the 14 notices he received in the garbage. Missed 6 court appearances, spent a night in jail. threatened the district attorney. then finally the seized his property and sold it. Not saying that system isn't problematic. I am saying this story and its source are trash.
- HarryHirsch 7y agoThe article conveniently hides the fact that the owner was a slumlord and the residence that the county seized was not owner-occupied and must have been in very bad shape. If something fetches 25 kUSD at auction when Zillow tells you that equivalent properties nearby go for five time that there's a good reason. You'd think that especially other slumlords appreciate when a derelict property is seized and disposed of quickly because the traphouse next door really causes a headache. It's the county that implemented the process, someone must have voted for the fast-track process!
- salehenrahman 7y agoStill not a valid reason for seizing an entire property, selling it, and pocketing the profit. At least threaten the guy with fines if he does not fix things up.
- ToFundorNot 7y agoMY favorite is how they rejected a payment on the outstanding taxes. Most municipalities in Canada are required to accept payment up to, and including the moment the auction begins. If the payment comes in, the property is off the block (in most auctions, the list of properties being auctioned end up being a fraction of the list that was printed the morning of). Slumlord or not, the municipalities are clearly being malicious in their handling of the appropriations.
- rolltiide 7y agoalmost like the bill of rights was set up to force us to skip these character judgements
- Aloha 7y agoDo you have citations backing that up? It's not unusual in my experience to see tax sales go for below fair market value.
- riazrizvi 7y agoSlumlord? Because he owns a property below market value?? $25k was the profit the County made in seizing his home and selling it at below market rate at auction to god knows what friend of the county. This absolutely stinks.
- AcerbicZero 7y agoThere was a man who was pushed too far once, by the local government. He used his free time to build a bulldozer, covered in armor, and do millions in property damage. I'm not saying he was right or wrong, but there is a serious cost associated with this kind of injustice, and its not entirely unpredictable.
- JadeNB 7y ago> I'm not saying he was right or wrong I'm going to go ahead and say he was wrong.
- bliteben 7y agoIf I as a tourist get an unreasonable/illegal parking ticket (looking at you oakland), I am likely to spend less money in your city if I have a choice in the future, esp if I submit proof that I wasn't parked where you said I was for the amount of time and you deny the appeal.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoVA Beach for me. I paid to park. The meter was broken do it didn't properly register the amount paid. Still got a ticket even after explaining. They told me my only recompense was to spend more than the ticket to fight it, in person only, at some unspecified date in the future. We spent nearly nothing we didn't have to for the rest of the trip. Hope you got your parking money.
- matheusmoreira 7y agoThe local people and government antagonized this man so he made composite armor, converted his bulldozer into a tank complete with mounted guns and started demolishing the buildings of his enemies. Explosives and bullets did nothing so they actually thought about deploying anti-tank weapons and attack helicopters against this guy. One civilian in a bulldozer! There is no doubt he was wrong but the fact is he built a tank. Can't help but respect his achievement.
- planteen 7y agoI think you are referring to Marvin Heemeyer in Granby, Colorado and he was absolutely wrong. I can't believe you think he was somehow justified in an attempted mass murder. A concrete plant was being constructed on vacant land adjacent to his shop. He originally agreed to sell his land, but then backed out. He was angry the concrete plant cut off his shortcut access through their vacant land (he had no easement). So he decided to try to murder anyone who he viewed as standing in his way. It is very lucky that he got stuck before he could fully execute his plan. "Investigators later found Heemeyer's handwritten list of targets. According to the police, it included the buildings he destroyed, the local Catholic church (which he did not damage), and the names of various people who had sided against him in past disputes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer "He drove the machine out of his shop through the wall, then plowed through the concrete plant, the Town Hall, a newspaper office, a former judge’s widow’s home, a hardware store, and other homes. Authorities realized that every business or home that had been bulldozed had some connection to Heemeyer and his plight against the zoning committee." https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer https://allthatsinteresting.com/marvin-heemeyer-killdozer
- JadeNB 7y agoThe title is missing important punctuation (a period after $8.41) that is in the original article; this makes it difficult to parse in a single pass.
- dsr_ 7y agoThe basic problem with the US legal system is that it operates on the wording of the law rather than the spirit of the law. Unfortunately, making the spirit of the law overrule the wording is subject to even more casual manipulation and corruption.
- hnick 7y agoIt has been said before that laws/bills should come with an intent or goal attached, similar to the useful type of source code comments. Judges exist because strictly parsing the words of a law is not always enough, and knowing whether the application of the law is in line with why it was coined would be a good step.
- cyndilooper 7y ago"Oppression and harassment are a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Charles Montgomery "Monty" Burns
- thrownaway954 7y agoam i missing something here? i thought that the county sent you a tax bill for the amount you owed and then you just paid the bill. that's how it's always been in numerous states that i've lived. heck... i even paid the tax on a credit card so i even got points ;) I then get an emailed receipt so i have a record, but also so i know that the payment went through. i can even refer to my credit card statement if there is ever an issue. also, if you are ever late or owe, the county has always sent numerous and i mean numerous letters saying so.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoHe didn't pay the 2011 tax bill that was due on time. A year later, entered into a multi-year payment plan to paid the overdue tax + interest, and failed to pay the full amount owed during the payment plan. The state eventually seized and auctioned the property and now the owner and his marketing firm claims he is owed all the money the state made above his unpaid bills.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mimiflynn 7y agoIt sounds like, where you live, the municipality doesn't have an incentive to not inform you of late or owed taxes. The issue is that the government in this case has every reason to not inform the property owner of late taxes owed.
- downerending 7y agoRecognizing that it sounds bad is easy. Figuring out something that would actually be better in the long run for society is hard. Any takers? (Also, the "profit" part is a red herring. There's no way the county could have done all of this for less than the proceeds of the sale.)
- rtkwe 7y agoFor starters there's already the concept of garnishing wages, income and tax returns the city could easily use those for cases like this. Sure there will be some cases where an action like this is reasonable but just sending notifications through the mail isn't enough they should have to use more active services like those for serving court documents where it can be validated that the owner received notification of the action, or at least a more rigorous effort was put in than just sending a letter.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago> Recognizing that it sounds bad is easy. Figuring out something that would actually be better in the long run for society is hard. Per the article, this is only possible in Michigan, and only because of a specific, misguided law passed in 1999. It's a solved problem.
- 0_gravitas 7y agoI've never liked this kind of hand-wavy reasoning on any topic, its unreasonably dismissive and to me always seems externally motivated in one way or another. "The situation is slightly more than mildly complex, therefore, you shouldn't be complaining or calling it 'wrong' if you don't have a complete near-zero-cost solution in your hands right now!" This, besides just being unreasonable, also seems to just willingly forget that figuring out the 'better system' is not our job, it completely ignores the fact that that is quite literally the supposed job of the actual serving politicians that we elected.
- rksgs 7y agoHow about you don't owe $8.41, though
- ilikehurdles 7y agoThe currently linked article is incredibly inciteful, which is to be expected of Reason whenever they cover tax and property issues. Another way to state one of the facts in this case is that the state seized the property of an owner who was delinquent on his tax bill for over 5 years and well aware of it. Once it's the state's property I don't see why they should pay the "profits" back to him or any other prior owner. At that point, the state and the collective taxpayers are already the owners and the money enters the collective fund. By giving away the profit to a previous owner, the argument presented is effectively that the State should be a taxpayer-funded seller's agent that works exclusively in the property owner's favor rather than working in favor of the taxpayers who actually pay their fair share.
- carapace 7y agoDid you mean "insightful" as in "has a lot of insight", or "inciteful" as in "likely to incite" or "provocative"? (I ask because "inciteful" isn't properly a word but it makes an interesting "mondegreen" in context.) edit: Excuse me! OED recognizes "inciteful" as a word. Sorry. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/12/inciteful.html https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/12/inciteful.html
- ilikehurdles 7y agoI actually wondered this as well before I used the word :). Although before reading your link, I didn't realize it was as rare of a usage as it is.
- throwaway34241 7y agoI get the problem you are describing, but they don't have to do it for free. I think it would be perfectly reasonable to have penalties / accumulating interest for late payment, and to sell the house if the total amount owed approaches a large % of the property value (and to charge an additional fee for selling the house). I think what people are objecting to here is confiscating the house over a tiny tax liability, selling the house for 1000x the tax liability, and pocketing the difference. For example, having a tax liability of $8, confiscating the house and selling it for $24000, then pocketing $23992 over the $8 tax liability. There's already a perfectly adequate way to address late property tax payments, charging interest. Either they pay and the city gets their money back (with interest), or they don't and the balance is eventually big enough to justify selling the property (so they get their money back with interest). It may be more lucrative for the city to confiscate the house immediately and make a 300000% profit on an $8 balance but it's hard to see how that's reasonable (and it seems like it will have to meet the "reasonable" threshold in order to be constitutional).
- mark_l_watson 7y agoA neighbor got a call from a local realtor five years ago asking why they were selling the house. They weren’t and discovered that they forgot to pay property taxes for the previous year. They quickly paid the taxes and all was good. On the flip side: a friend buys up many tax lien properties, usually for very little money.
- schnevets 7y agoThis topic frequently comes up with the "Zombie Homes" in my NY town. A non-incumbent mayoral candidate actually proposed a 3 month window where the land owner is notified before the city seizes the property, condemns the home, and demolishes it. No one wins in these institution vs. institution battles. The government does not have the agility to act as an intermediary between a public that wants land utilized and property owners who may be a single citizen or a multinational conglomerate. In my opinion, the more I hear about squatters rights, the more it sounds like the only appropriate solution.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoMy mind silently filled in a missing “MM” after the amount in the title. I had to go back and read it again to clear to my confusion. That is how ridiculous it is.
- moonbug 7y agoanother entry on the list of why it's surprisingly bad to live in the US.
- agapon 7y agoAnd people are surprised with increasing suicide and drug abuse rates in the US... This kind of random and unusually cruel punishment can do anyone in.
- kbos87 7y agoI’d rather focus not on the legality of this (which should of course be fixed) but instead the people who played a direct role in this happening. They shouldn’t be able to drop their kids off at school, pick up a coffee at Starbucks, or show their faces at a family holiday without being confronted by the people around them - from now until forever. If I were this guy, telling the truth of what they knowingly did to everyone around them would be my personal mission until the day I die.