New York Man’s Home Seized After He Comes Up $936 Short on $10,813 Tax Tab

Fox News ^ | February 05, 2014 | FoxNews.com

[DogByte6RER]

New York man’s home seized after he comes up $936 short on $10,813 tax tab

A Syracuse man had his home seized after he paid back $9,877 in city taxes over a six-month period -- but came up $936 short.

"I tried so hard. I tried so hard to make these payments," Calvin James, who found out he lost the home when he walked into City Hall on Dec. 6 with a $1,500 check, told The Syracuse Post-Standard. The property had been seized Dec. 4.

The paper reported that the city launched an aggressive foreclosure campaign in 2012. The program puts the troubled properties into the Syracuse-area land bank, which either sells or demolishes them. James, who paid $8,500 in 2009 for the property, is currently renting his old home for $500 a month, the report said.

The city told the paper it's sorry the way James' story worked out.

[Theodore R.]

NY voters are so dumb that they think they are voting to protect the “little guy”, but they only oppress him.

[Chode]

pretty much...

[Chode]

three sets of taxes too, city, town/county and school...

[JSDude1]

So then, if he doesn’t get to keep his home does he get his $9,877 back? I think I know the answer to my question..

Government is so greedy.

[mylife]

We’ve become a nation of nazis.

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

So this starter in 2012 or 6 years ago? Poorly written article.

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

Edit: so this started in 2012 or 6 months ago?

[uncommonsense]

"everybody talks on and on about it but are the ole white males willing to do anything about it in mass...NO!!!!"

I'm sure we're too far down the road to stop the statism. The only thing every person has near complete control over is how much they feed the beast.

The sooner we cut off the money fueling statism, the sooner the inevitable re-set occurs (more accurately - collapse). The nation is insolvent, states and cities are insolvent... time to stop enabling tyranny with our blood, sweat, and property.

There are many ways to opt out of feeding the beast. Not everyone will want to minimize their participation in funding statists due to "pride" in their production, but it's no better than useful idiots parroting statist talking points.

[cloudmountain]

This SEEMS to me another case of not getting the whole story. We don't know if this man has had a history of NOT paying his taxes.

Besides, there are SO many loopholes in the property tax system for people to slide around, over, under and through. Also, he could just be an a-hole. There is always that.

I DON'T think that we are getting the whole story...knowing the way the media write these stories.

[Kackikat]

Now that you mention it....he was never going to survive all of it.

[Wuli]

we need to abolish the method of setting property taxes by “progressive” tax methods, in which you pay more for getting the same city services as everyone else, just because your property has a “higher assessed value”, and whether higher or lower your taxes go up just because the assessors determine a new “assessed value” just because the POTENTIAL value of the house has gone up, if you were to sell it, acording to new “market values” - but neither of those conditions, both of which make your taxes higher, provides MORE service/services to you for the higher tax.

does the more “expensive” household in town get “better” or more police protection, better roads in front f their house, better administration of their business with the city administration, better sewers and water, etc.? No. So why should they be paying more? Because it is easier to squeeze more out of “most” of the local people if “most” of them will think in class envy and class warfare terms, and assume that “at least that guy over there with the biger house” is going to have to pay more than they will

it - property taxes - do not have to be done that way, and not doing them that way would help reign in local spending excesses, because everyone would participate EQUALLY, not proportionately to their “worth”, in any tax increases, with the totals of the cost of each kind of local city service translated into a fixed cost per household.

“progressive” taxes are not about being “fair”, they are all about making it seem easier to extract more, and getting away with through promotion of class-envy

[Rembrandt]

“everybody talks on and on about it but are the ole white males willing to do anything about it in mass...NO!!!!”

Tell us more about why you dislike white males so much.

[The Antiyuppie]

“In America your home is not yours even when its mortgage free”

But...but...when I was in grade school, they taught us that the main difference between capitalism and communism was the private ownership of land...I know of places in this country where the property tax on a home approaches 5% of it’s real value a year...so, isn’t that really just “renting”?

[The Antiyuppie]

In our city, I live in a new subdivision where a good part of the cost of the property was the state-of-the-art, Army Corps of Engineers approved sewage and drainage systems (including the wetlands). Then, the EPA clamped down on the entire city because of it’s decrepit sewer systems in the older neighborhoods. Solution? They tacked the cost of ripping the old stuff up onto the sewer bill for everyone. It takes a village, you know...

[Wuli]

“In our city, I live in a new subdivision where a good part of the cost of the property was the state-of-the-art, Army Corps of Engineers approved sewage and drainage systems (including the wetlands). Then, the EPA clamped down on the entire city because of it’s decrepit sewer systems in the older neighborhoods. Solution? They tacked the cost of ripping the old stuff up onto the sewer bill for everyone. It takes a village, you know...”

in a town we use to have some rental property in, a local sewer agency, not the city, builds & maintains the sewer system, floats bonds if/when needed for capital projects, and charges quaterly fees to everyone hooked up on the system, but ONLY someone hooked up on the system, as some homes were not connected and were staying on their existing septic tanks and might not be added to the system for a long time, or ever in some cases

people only became part of paying for the sewer system as it expanded to include them, and the approval for new bonds for new capital requirements as the system grew depended on substantiating that the new sewer-rate-payers to whom service was expanding would be enough additional customers to support the revenue needed to add the cost of the new bonds, as well as the expanded operations, to the sewer agency’s budget, so that increased rates for existing customers would not be needed

one of our properties never got hooked up (too much vacant land on that street). another one did and when it did (when that section was added) rates neither went up for existing customers, nor did those in the added section pay a different rate than existing customers

the growth of the system was well planned, both geographically and financially

it could have been very expensive, because “environmentyal” interests wanted every residence in the area hooked up and off of the septic tanks, regardless of costs, and in that area, with some streets/roads having just a few residences over a very long distance, the per-capita costs of a “total” system would have been extremely high, and the local pols managed to get a waiver from the state so they could proceed on their incremental plan, keeping any growth within limits that were reasonably affordable

[Uncle Chip]

Welcome to the new America — creating homelessness one bankrupt taxpayer at a time.

[Revelation 911]

Revel - I live in Rochester and led a fight in the mid 90's to get our Town to reassess - it had last been done in '72....at the time, the state allowed a =/- variance of about 16%....the Towns variance was 18%+...beyond State allowed disparity. They reassessed, and instead of throwing the money away on a one time reassessment - they made a commitment to reassess every couple years..In fact, it was the assessor who provided me the docs the Town Supervisor and Clerk were hiding from me in proving the disparity...and allowed me the strength to threaten a lawsuit against them. After getting an initial screwing on my assessment for raising the issue, we came back with an accurate appraisal and had it corrected.... it settled into an accurate number, and remains there this day

10k in taxes - I call BS - unless its an inner city mansion in swanktown....and swanktown is no where near Syracuse LOL

[Skooz]

Government taxes your property, your purchases, your income, your utility bills, gasoline, capital gains, your estate. It taxes luxury items, alcohol and tobacco. It makes you pay tolls, fines, licenses, registrations....and it is never enough. Government STILL runs deficits after fleecing you dry. And if you don’t pay up, they take your property or put you in jail. And if you point all this out, you are called a terrorist.

Well stated. Agree 100%

[CommieCutter]

Remember then the left flipped out because a volunteer/private fire department let a man’s house burn because he didn’t pay for the service, even after he was warned once after a close call?

That story was all over CrapBook pointing out the failures of “right wing reality”.

But they have no problem stealing a man’s home.

[Organic Panic]

You should watch the battles I have have with the county crook here. She is completely ignorant about everything in my shop. When we use to hear sories about $20,000 hammers and $50,000 toilet seat for the army they certainly hired a tax assessor to value them.