7 ms·

I'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 warni

I'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 ago
Less 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 ago
  Fair 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.
  - JAlexoid 7y ago
    Yes it is. The law is bad, because it allows officials to increase their own income, by taking someone's property. That's the case with asset forfeiture(there have been many cases where police have literally used that legal tool to have a better salary), fines on poor people(reason literally covered a case about it today) and other methods. I say this from experience - American police are all shitbags working to enforce the law, not to "Serve and Protect". That Serve and Protect dissipates really fast, when you're mugged... and materializes really fast when a citation is possible.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rwmurrayVT 7y ago
    If you owe 1,000 USD is there ever a situation where you should forfeit an asset, have it liquidated, and then regain none of the proceeds over what you owe? It says in the article they found that they were received over 40 USD for every 1 USD owed in taxes. It's not a couple of mistakes. It's blatantly doing the bare minimum to ensure that you can pad a budget deficit via forfeiture. Sure, if someone has an asset that they aren't paying taxes on you can put a lien against it or maybe even take it in forfeiture. You absolutely can't keep the entirety of the proceeds from a sale above what's owed and maybe the funds for running an auction. In the end I think they have a fair legal case for recourse. There's no criminal violation and a civil violation isn't enough for complete asset forfeiture.
ryanworl 7y ago
Sell the property at auction, but use the proceeds to pay the tax debt and a fine large enough to cover the cost to the county of administrating the sale. Then send the remainder back to the owner. This solves the problem without creating (too large of) a perverse incentive for the county government.
- jolmg 7y ago
  > It was sold for $24,500 [...] estimates the property is worth $128,000
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Send it to who? This was an absentee landlord in a low-rent property. This is a very aggressive law, but there are reasons that the law is written this way. Drawn-out processes to seize property tend to lead to higher levels of vacancy and destruction of the property. Local governments often don't know who the beneficial owner of a property is, especially with low-end rentals. I used to consult to a local utility. Probably 30% of the properties were owned by LLCs where the owner was unknown. At least a half dozen had bills sent to people known to be dead. In this case you're looking at a landlord in his 80s who doesn't get mail regarding his rental property sent to his home. It sucks, but once there's a lien on the property you're SOL as a property owner.
  - glitchc 7y ago
    If the property is legitimately owned, the title is registered with the land registry office. These are public records and the county definitely has access to them. > It sucks, but once there's a lien on the property you're SOL as a property owner. That implies that any home with a mortgage means you're SOL. Does this mean ownership is dead? The US has a mix of title-theory and lien-theory states. In lien-theory states, a mortgage counts as a lien on the home. Michigan, in particular, is an intermediary state, in which case the mortgage does have some component of a lien. It gets complicated since each state has it's own rules.
caseysoftware 7y ago
> "They were warned. If you ignore the warnings, what else is the county supposed to do?" But what you quoted: > "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." It appears there are many cases where nothing was ignored. Notification wasn't received. And that's without considering the perverse incentive where it's in the county's best interest to "accidentally" send notices to the wrong address.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  If it goes to the right property, and you still don't pay, you aren't using the property enough to be allowed to have it, IMO. That's what I'm saying. If you're only at that house every couple of years, why shouldn't the county take it and sell it to someone who will actually use it? This all depends on how much of a warning you get and such. Obviously if you only get a month's warning or something that would be bad, but if you're warned a year or two in advance I see no problem with this. Set up a system were you can go to court to challenge it. In cases where notices were sent to the wrong address or you simply forgot interest you should be able to overturn this, sure.
  - ihattendorf 7y ago
    "It looks like the money in your savings account/investments in your investment account haven't been touched in a few years. We're taking it and giving it to someone who will use it."
  - glitchc 7y ago
    > If it goes to the right property, and you still don't pay, you aren't using the property enough to be allowed to have it, IMO. > If you're only at that house every couple of years, why shouldn't the county take it and sell it to someone who will actually use it? That's not how property ownership works in America.
tobltobs 7y ago
That was more like the devil's clown.
jtcruthers 7y ago
Your comment is so heavily downvoted I literally can't read it. Never seen that before
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  Because its poorly thought out. Also you can click on an individual comment and it will be perfectly readable
  - jtcruthers 7y ago
    Ahhh! I appreciate the tip. Still getting used to the UI
michaelmrose 7y ago
It would be a lessor ill for the county to forgive the 8 dollars or add it to the next years tax bill. The government shouldn't be in the business of maximizing profit at the expense of the well being of the people. There is not one correct thing in your entire post. We have no proof that said notice was actually received. When you take legal action even as a private citizen the onus is on YOU to ensure communication is received not on them to ensure they received it. If you are going to take a property worth 10s of thousands you can spend a few dollars paying someone to serve a notice. You may correctly discern that nobody that had actually been thus notified would fail to pay the $8 and thus such service would certainly result in a financial loss. Tack the cost of said service onto the bill or just take the $8 onto the next years bill. You incorrectly claim that their is either anarchy where nobody pays their taxes or a punitive dystopia where 83 year olds lose their properties over Less than the cost of a value meal at McDonald's and exclude the entire middle ground where virtually all sane governments reside. A dullard could design a functional middle ground and if you look at the array of imbeciles that work in local government they in fact largely have all over America. A few thoughts from yours truly. - Require onerous process prior to actually taking a house to ensure that all takings are a result of actual decisions not to pay rather than mischance. Example paying people to actually serve notice to the person and prove receipt or that such service is impossible in extreme cases where someone is missing or impossible to contact. You can reasonably charge someone for this service. - A fine for nonpayment - Minimum principal due before you can take a property to ensure that no matter of 8 dollars results in a house being taken. This ensures that you can't simply keep piling on fines until it reaches the minimum. - A lien on the value of the house for the money due when the property is sold or transferred so that the government gets paid its due. - A policy of forgiving small discrepancies or miscalculations say under 10 bucks to ensure more money isn't spent on collection than is worthwhile. The government could affect a net decrease in homelessness by literally taking away properties from wealthy people who own multiples and giving them to the poor. In fact any action that takes away from some and gives to the other makes someone better off. That being the general case doesn't make the specific case of this old fellow losing his house to a predatory system better or said system reasonable.
- megous 7y ago
  - Or take something of the similar value from the property. A toaster or whatever and auction that off.
zentiggr 7y ago
So given the conversations on record and quoted in the article about certain treasurers deliberately doing the least effective actions and anticipating the "legal" right to claim a property, you're still going to claim that the system is a net positive? I'll bet you make weekly non-trivial transactions in every financial account you don't want seized - "well, you obviously weren't actively using these funds, so they've been collected and the county will make better use of them." It's legalized piracy is what it is.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rwmurrayVT 7y ago

Less 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 ago
Fair 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.
- JAlexoid 7y ago
  Yes it is. The law is bad, because it allows officials to increase their own income, by taking someone's property. That's the case with asset forfeiture(there have been many cases where police have literally used that legal tool to have a better salary), fines on poor people(reason literally covered a case about it today) and other methods. I say this from experience - American police are all shitbags working to enforce the law, not to "Serve and Protect". That Serve and Protect dissipates really fast, when you're mugged... and materializes really fast when a citation is possible.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
  If you owe 1,000 USD is there ever a situation where you should forfeit an asset, have it liquidated, and then regain none of the proceeds over what you owe? It says in the article they found that they were received over 40 USD for every 1 USD owed in taxes. It's not a couple of mistakes. It's blatantly doing the bare minimum to ensure that you can pad a budget deficit via forfeiture. Sure, if someone has an asset that they aren't paying taxes on you can put a lien against it or maybe even take it in forfeiture. You absolutely can't keep the entirety of the proceeds from a sale above what's owed and maybe the funds for running an auction. In the end I think they have a fair legal case for recourse. There's no criminal violation and a civil violation isn't enough for complete asset forfeiture.

ryanworl 7y ago

Sell the property at auction, but use the proceeds to pay the tax debt and a fine large enough to cover the cost to the county of administrating the sale. Then send the remainder back to the owner. This solves the problem without creating (too large of) a perverse incentive for the county government.

jolmg 7y ago
> It was sold for $24,500 [...] estimates the property is worth $128,000
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Spooky23 7y ago
Send it to who? This was an absentee landlord in a low-rent property. This is a very aggressive law, but there are reasons that the law is written this way. Drawn-out processes to seize property tend to lead to higher levels of vacancy and destruction of the property. Local governments often don't know who the beneficial owner of a property is, especially with low-end rentals. I used to consult to a local utility. Probably 30% of the properties were owned by LLCs where the owner was unknown. At least a half dozen had bills sent to people known to be dead. In this case you're looking at a landlord in his 80s who doesn't get mail regarding his rental property sent to his home. It sucks, but once there's a lien on the property you're SOL as a property owner.
- glitchc 7y ago
  If the property is legitimately owned, the title is registered with the land registry office. These are public records and the county definitely has access to them. > It sucks, but once there's a lien on the property you're SOL as a property owner. That implies that any home with a mortgage means you're SOL. Does this mean ownership is dead? The US has a mix of title-theory and lien-theory states. In lien-theory states, a mortgage counts as a lien on the home. Michigan, in particular, is an intermediary state, in which case the mortgage does have some component of a lien. It gets complicated since each state has it's own rules.

caseysoftware 7y ago

> "They were warned. If you ignore the warnings, what else is the county supposed to do?" But what you quoted: > "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." It appears there are many cases where nothing was ignored. Notification wasn't received. And that's without considering the perverse incentive where it's in the county's best interest to "accidentally" send notices to the wrong address.

Miner49er 7y ago
If it goes to the right property, and you still don't pay, you aren't using the property enough to be allowed to have it, IMO. That's what I'm saying. If you're only at that house every couple of years, why shouldn't the county take it and sell it to someone who will actually use it? This all depends on how much of a warning you get and such. Obviously if you only get a month's warning or something that would be bad, but if you're warned a year or two in advance I see no problem with this. Set up a system were you can go to court to challenge it. In cases where notices were sent to the wrong address or you simply forgot interest you should be able to overturn this, sure.
- ihattendorf 7y ago
  "It looks like the money in your savings account/investments in your investment account haven't been touched in a few years. We're taking it and giving it to someone who will use it."
- glitchc 7y ago
  > If it goes to the right property, and you still don't pay, you aren't using the property enough to be allowed to have it, IMO. > If you're only at that house every couple of years, why shouldn't the county take it and sell it to someone who will actually use it? That's not how property ownership works in America.

tobltobs 7y ago

That was more like the devil's clown.

jtcruthers 7y ago

Your comment is so heavily downvoted I literally can't read it. Never seen that before

michaelmrose 7y ago
Because its poorly thought out. Also you can click on an individual comment and it will be perfectly readable
- jtcruthers 7y ago
  Ahhh! I appreciate the tip. Still getting used to the UI

michaelmrose 7y ago

It would be a lessor ill for the county to forgive the 8 dollars or add it to the next years tax bill. The government shouldn't be in the business of maximizing profit at the expense of the well being of the people. There is not one correct thing in your entire post. We have no proof that said notice was actually received. When you take legal action even as a private citizen the onus is on YOU to ensure communication is received not on them to ensure they received it. If you are going to take a property worth 10s of thousands you can spend a few dollars paying someone to serve a notice. You may correctly discern that nobody that had actually been thus notified would fail to pay the $8 and thus such service would certainly result in a financial loss. Tack the cost of said service onto the bill or just take the $8 onto the next years bill. You incorrectly claim that their is either anarchy where nobody pays their taxes or a punitive dystopia where 83 year olds lose their properties over Less than the cost of a value meal at McDonald's and exclude the entire middle ground where virtually all sane governments reside. A dullard could design a functional middle ground and if you look at the array of imbeciles that work in local government they in fact largely have all over America. A few thoughts from yours truly. - Require onerous process prior to actually taking a house to ensure that all takings are a result of actual decisions not to pay rather than mischance. Example paying people to actually serve notice to the person and prove receipt or that such service is impossible in extreme cases where someone is missing or impossible to contact. You can reasonably charge someone for this service. - A fine for nonpayment - Minimum principal due before you can take a property to ensure that no matter of 8 dollars results in a house being taken. This ensures that you can't simply keep piling on fines until it reaches the minimum. - A lien on the value of the house for the money due when the property is sold or transferred so that the government gets paid its due. - A policy of forgiving small discrepancies or miscalculations say under 10 bucks to ensure more money isn't spent on collection than is worthwhile. The government could affect a net decrease in homelessness by literally taking away properties from wealthy people who own multiples and giving them to the poor. In fact any action that takes away from some and gives to the other makes someone better off. That being the general case doesn't make the specific case of this old fellow losing his house to a predatory system better or said system reasonable.

megous 7y ago
- Or take something of the similar value from the property. A toaster or whatever and auction that off.

zentiggr 7y ago

So given the conversations on record and quoted in the article about certain treasurers deliberately doing the least effective actions and anticipating the "legal" right to claim a property, you're still going to claim that the system is a net positive? I'll bet you make weekly non-trivial transactions in every financial account you don't want seized - "well, you obviously weren't actively using these funds, so they've been collected and the county will make better use of them." It's legalized piracy is what it is.