Home Lost Over Tax Bill of $546

latimes.com ^ | 2/17/03 | Jocelyn Y. Stewart

[ivegotabrain]

In the auditorium at the Los Angeles County Arboretum, an auctioneer stood on stage before a crowd of 700 people and offered bidders the most valuable possession 85-year-old Terrell Dotson owned.

The minimum bid for the one-bedroom, one-bathroom Inglewood condominium was just $4,287 -- enough to pay back taxes, interest, penalties and the costs of selling the property. The county was selling the condo because, seven years ago, Dotson failed to pay one $546.81 tax bill.

When the bidding hit $81,000, the auctioneer bellowed, "Sold!"

With that, Terrell Dotson, an Army veteran of World War II, lost the home he had paid for in full -- and all that came with it.

[ivegotabrain]

Blessings on you!

[jjm2111]

He should have shot the governor. After all the money the pols waste too.

[TankerKC]

Thanks for the math, but here it is from the article:

$4,287 -- enough to pay back taxes, interest, penalties and the costs of selling the property.

It doesn't appear to be 7.84 years of unpaid taxes. And, no, this probably wasn't a surprise to the old guy, but it is sad just the same.

[muawiyah]

This is the exact same system that was in place in California in the 1940s. It is regularly used to dispossess unpopular minorities, and sometimes dishonest local officials will target the elderly or poor for disposession.

The Japanese-American community in California owned billions of dollars of property. One family I know owned Wilshire Boulevard for all practical purposes. THe LA county sheriff stole it from them while they were imprisoned in Arkansas with a son in China on Stillwell's top level staff. They were given a settlement at the end of WWII worth 5 cents on the dollar. They bought a serious farm with the money. Later on they sold it to Disney for his Disneland parking lot.

All attempts to reform the California real property-theft system have met massive opposition from well-financed interests.

Unfortunately for everybody these interests are bi-partisan and many well-known Conservative and Liberal Hollywood types have dipped their spears in the blood of victimized property owners time after time.

Rest assured that the evil minions at the Los Angeles Times continue to lay in wait for Jim Robinson to slip up on his property tax payments. They will use the corrupt California court system to lay him low in a second.

[kpp_kpp]

serious question: where in the U.S. are there no property taxes (if anywhere)?

[coloradan]

Look into what is called "allodial" property - that which is owned outright and not subject to tax.

[Reeses]

which is annoying

The user name and password "annoying" works at the LA Slimes as well as many other annoying sites. You do have to accept their cookie though.

[IYAS9YAS]

You are not quite correct. He could have missed one bill and never gotten out of hot water. If he paid regularly he would still lose to interest and penalties. I'm betting the biggest chunk is penalties.

Most systems are set up as thus: missed payment + interest and penalties...

Make payment: Interest is paid first, then penalties, then tax

Pay only the tax due, then interest and penalties get paid, the tax does not and continues to collect interest.

I've seen it happen. It sucks.

[MEGoody]

So LA county doesn't have homestead exemptions for the elderly? Gee, I never would have imagined that for such a 'liberal' location.

Wonder why Babs Streisand or Danny Glover or Alec Baldwin or some of the other hollyweird types didn't pony up to help this poor man. Could it be their liberal 'compassion' doesn't really exist?

[MEGoody]

The $4,287 was $546.81 in taxes plus interest and penalties. Remember, this guy is elderly. We don't know what type of fixed income he was living on. He may have missed paying the taxes 7 years ago for whatever reason (had to buy medicine instead of paying the taxes or whatever). Once he missed it, he just never seemed to have the money to catch them up.

There is also the possibility that the old fella was a bit senile and hadn't understood any notices he had received in the mail. He may have thought they were junk mail.

Spend time with some 85 year old folks. Once you've done that, you'll easily see how this could happen.

[CyberAnt]

Possible Solution: Find out who the congressperson is for his district, and tell them. Hopefully it will be a person who will go to bat for this guy and set things right!

[IYAS9YAS]

That'd be closer to 76,000. They sold it for 81,000 and he owed less than 5,000 on it (to include tax, penalties, interest and the cost to sell it). Plus whatever he overpaid in taxes after they sold it.

He could move here to Idaho and find a very nice place (and really nice people who love their veterans) for that.

[ivegotabrain]

Hmmm. Article says $55,000. I wonder what fresh hell they've concocted for him.

[cruiserman]

I wish I knew the answer.

[IYAS9YAS]

Probably the "you shed light on our corrupt dealings" tax.

[Slainte]

You guys really should read the entire article. This has been playing out for almost a year, and there is much, much more to the story than you can gleen from the excerpt...

[Centurion2000]

85 yrs old....i would have shot the auctioneer and the sob that bought it and all the other "actors" on stage....give me life in prison...at 85 is about 30 minutes.

I was thinking the same thing .... give him the money ... and give him an M-1 Garand.

[jocon307]

"...homestead exemptions..."

You want a homestead, move to Florida. You can't have a home taken away from you there for NO THING, that, and the no estate tax makes it attractive to people. Creative tax structure, other states should learn from it.

Of course, Florida is a fascists state and hometown of Janet Reno, but you gotta take the bad with the good.

[Redcloak]

Perhaps he was a "sovereign soup du jour" citizen, or whatever it is that those tax-dodgers call themselves.

[ivegotabrain]

Unquestionably, the state did everything that it was REQUIRED to do. The truly sad part is that if someone, somewhere along the line had bothered to take a slightly closer look (and care, just a little bit,) this gentleman could have continued to live his life with dignity and relative anonymity.

There were many clues that this gentleman didn't understand what was going on. As far as he knew, he had paid all of his taxes; in person, no less. He does seem to have a diminished capability, and it's a shame that apparently no one wanted to look out for him.

Anyone out there that has protested their property taxes knows what a nit-picking, time-consuming, I want to blow my brains out right now, pain in the posterior it is. Judging from the article this fellow couldn't possibly have handled all of that.