Posted on 09/25/2009 6:13:28 PM PDT by Saije
The battered house on Sherwin Road was put to good use before the fire department burned it to the ground.
SWAT teams barged through the front door in an exercise on dealing with domestic violence. Rescue crews scattered mannequins around the house and blew smoke through the halls to simulate a meth lab explosion. Firefighters set fires in one room after another and practiced putting them out. Then, in one last drill, they torched the whole place.
Five years later, though, a dispute still smolders over the homeowner's attempt to claim a $287,000 charitable tax deduction for donating the house to the fire department, which has burned down at least 32 such homes in Upper Arlington since 1988.
The Internal Revenue Service is trying to stop homeowners from claiming such deductions...
The dispute adds a new element of controversy to the decades-old debate over whether the risks associated with "live burns" -- more than a dozen firefighters have been killed in the past two decades -- outweigh the training benefits.
ESPN commentator Kirk Herbstreit, who also lives in Upper Arlington, let firefighters burn his home in 2004. The former Ohio State football star's claim of a $330,000 tax deduction was rejected a year later. Herbstreit declined to comment...
Environmental laws in some states ban live burns. In other states, most fire departments adhere to safety guidelines that say windows should be boarded up, floors inspected for sturdiness and shingles and carpets stripped away.
Three firefighters were trapped by flames and perished in a 100-year-old farmhouse in Milford Township, Mich., during a controlled burn in 1987. In February 2007, a fire recruit was killed in a training exercise in a Baltimore rowhouse.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
An ESPN commentator? Sadly it was not Olberman’s house.
Too bad if they disallow this deduction. Gotten my department a lot of live fire training. What FF injuries have to do with a tax deduction i’ll never know
They should burn down ACORN and IRS offices instead.
It’s a D.C. thing.
We had a house on the block they did this to — Attack attack and attack some more. I think they paid for taking the house down after the events were over or some such minimal payment. They did make a mess of the place, meaning he couldn’t sell the the usual doors, windows and such to a salvage vendor ... But the $12k he got for demotion, what the owner was going to do anyway, and it helped the police and fire department with training.
They used the house for multiple activities, because for weeks we got notices to don’t shoot the officers. They even showed up at night in boats ... LOL. Lots of grenade flash bangs and pistol shots. The FD showed after the shoots.
I doubt the owner ever thought about a full value tax deduction. To do so is just not right.
Yes his new house is now built there.
Nah it’s a New York thing that started in the late ‘60’s.They want to turn their nest in to a South Bronx Sh-t Hole.Let the animals devour themselves!
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