Posted on 09/07/2013 11:27:30 PM PDT by RC one
On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.
Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.
All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Did you read the article?
"But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.
As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.
Property owners in the District risk losing their homes over relatively small amounts in unpaid property taxes. Here’s a look at the process:
If you don't pay your taxes, the District sells a lien for the tax debt to an investor, usually a company. The investor gets a lien.
Families have been forced to borrow or strike payment plans to save their homes.
Others weren’t as lucky. Tax lien purchasers have foreclosed on nearly 200 houses since 2005 and are now pressing to take 1,200 more, many owned free and clear by families for generations.
Investors also took storefronts, parking lots and vacant land — about 500 properties in all, or an average of one a week. In dozens of cases, the liens were less than $500.
Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home. His debt had snowballed to $4,999 — 37 times the original tax bill. Not only did he lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything, trumping even mortgage companies."
Still taking the "noble" view that you wouldn't have been in a position like his?
WideAwake(really sound asleep) is a typical Federal Bootlicking idiot. A statist tool.
Consumption taxes,that is ,sales taxes are likely the fairest.
No income tax;you get what you earn.
No property tax;you get to keep what you buy.A corrollary is that inventory taxes(property) would no longer punish businesses for having on hand a larger quantity of raw materials or goods or even “obsolete” parts.Such things would be determined by supply and demand and the owners’ desires to meet customer needs.Just one example ,utilities could have a larger fuel stockpile to get through transportation disruptions.Nor would sound,but temporarily unused, building be torn down just because it is cheaper than paying taxes.
Sales tax;that takes into account all the government actually need to allow the goods or service to be delivered.Of course the sales tax would have to be fairly high but if government was restricted to the original functions it need not be exoribant.Considereing the total of all taxes now steals about half one’s earnings, a sales tax of 25% would be a relief IF,and only if, there were no other taxes.
If you are frugal in buying your personal wealth will accrue faster than someone who prefers to enjoy his money at once.
Without property tax you need fear a period of unemployent or illness or old age much less since you have not the fear of government taking away your home.
One’s home ought to be a safe refuge.Instead in today’s U.S. and elsewhere, it is a place you may occupy only with the paid-for permission of men with guns who will kill you if you resist eviction.
That sounds harsh but it is what every law eventually comes to;no matter how minor the first “offense” if you do not comply the government can escalate the situation to deadly force.
There was a Congressman (I think he may even have been a Democrat of the old school) who claimed his test for a new law was”would I send a man with a gun to force my mother to comply? “ I can only wish all those making laws thought that way.
Of course my ideas are anathema to the real estate industry which exists to make a big profit on all transfers of land and buildings .Without government -forced transfers of property the real estate industry and agents would see their income drop.And by government-forced I defintely include eminent domain abuses and property sold to pay taxes.There have been many farms sold because a city annexed the land and the farmer simply could not raise a legal crop capable of generating the money to pay city land tax on a cornfield.Government is always about forcing someone to do something.
Much wisdom there. Thanks.
At the very least the former property owner should get all the equity remaining after REASONABLE fees .The city likely spent several times more on police time evicting the old man than the $134 tax bill!
Abusing the government taxing powers in collusion with “sharp” investors to steal property and turn 10,000% profits ought to be rewarded by trials followed by a public hanging of all those complicit.I mean that seriously.
If I would have known, I would have loaned him the $134. Where is the community?
Garage sale, bake sale, anything sale. The amount of money isn’t the problem here.
Yes, legalism is nothing but tyranny by bureaucrats, and bureaucrats, being nameless, faceless, unaccountable and nearly inerradicable, might be the worst tyrants of all. At least with a charismatic tyrant like a Hitler, you have an opportunity to depose or assassinate him, and perhaps set things back on track. Getting rid of bureaucrats is futile, so all we can hope to do is limit how much power they can amass for themselves.
You asked the key questions right there. Except that this is more than a crime. It is a shameful national disgrace. It is on the level of something Stalin would have done.
The poor man is a Marine Corps veteran, to boot. And for those wondering why he didn't pay the $134, from the article:
"Coleman, struggling with dementia, was among those who lost a home."
Doesn’t the man in question live in DC? One could argue that HE has been denied the right to elect his representatives.
Bingo. There is so much more a responsive government could have done. They could have garnished a portion of his social security benefits, for example.
But that would't send the correct message to the peasant class. Sending armed agents to pull you out of your house sends the correct message.
Bingo. Property tax is nothing more than our tyrannical governments’ version of paying rent to live on the King’s land.
Did he ignore the notices required to be sent, first by the taxing authority then by the lienholder? All he had to do was pay the lien and accrued interest. Was there no one willing to help him out, or did he decline to ask for help?
Nothing to see in this story other than an elderly vet with dementia was taken advantage of.
Government is a contract where we have given it permission to force us to do certain things in order to preserve and protect the common good. But in that there is supposed to be justice. (I did not say fairness. There is a difference which is often difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it.)
In this program, the homeowners know. The primary mechanism of this program is that the purchaser earns interest until the taxes are paid. There is a 6-month window with multiple notifications, where the homeowner can get out of this with very little extra cost (of course, paying the actual tax would generally avoid the issue altogether).
In this case, the guy had dementia, so maybe he was not able to understand what was happening. If a private company did this to a person, the government would step in to stop it. But in this case, it is the government doing it, so there is no protection.
After the 6 months, the homeowner still has the standard foreclosure rules protecting them; the problem there is that the 3rd party involved can charge legal fees related to the filing, just like your mortgage company could do if you stopped paying the mortgage.
The sad part is that if this guy had a mortgage, the mortgage company would have made sure the taxes were paid, since a tax lien would wipe them out as well.
If the guy had been upside down on his mortgage the company wouldn’t have bought the lien. It’s a money maker.
If you don’t want to pay property taxes, then look for a place to own property where there is no government that needs to provide services to the people who live in their domain.
Well, you probably won’t be able to find such a place, and if you did, you’d probably end up being run out by the guys with bigger weapons, because there’d be no police force to enforce the law.
But anyway — I like the Texas model where old people just get their taxes added to the home and paid off when the old people sell or die.
I would like to see counties switch from a pure property tax to a “residence tax”. Each resident costs the same amount for the police to protect, so charge them each the same amount. Property tax pretends that the current value of your property reflects your current ability to pay. If you want to charge rich people more, throw in an income tax.
You have nothing in the way of an “arguement”, merely the parroted response of “the law is the law”, and I merely pointed out the obvious fact that the current power structure completely ignores it while holding the citizenry to a minute and arbitrary interpretation of the same for the SOLE purpose of cowing said citizenry into fearful submission.
If that isn’t tyranny, I eagerly await your definition of it.
As for “voting out that structure”, the current demographic breakdown, purposefully molded to support it, is right about at the cusp of where it would be impossible to do so. Between the masses of the created dependant class (corporations and people alike), the cheating, and the encouragement and manipulation to foster the voting franchise on un-LAWFULLY resident foreign groups, that possibility is close to or already in the rear view mirror.
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