Free Republic

Audits of 12 school districts has state Auditor General Timothy DeFoor believing school boards are playing a “shell game” with taxpayer funds by moving money into reserve accounts to allow them to make a case for raising property tax rates. State laws limit how much school districts can raise property taxes and sets limits on those increases but allows for exceptions to be granted in one of two ways: ask voters’ permission through a referendum or ask the state Department of Education for a referendum exception. “These 12 districts collectively raised taxes 37 times during the four years we reviewed...

Hennepin County, Minnesota homeowner Geraldine Tyler in an undated photo. (Courtesy of Pacific Legal Foundation) The Supreme Court decided late on Jan. 13 to hear the appeal of a 94-year-old homeowner who is challenging the constitutionality of laws that allow local governments to take the full value of a home as payment for much smaller property tax debts. The decision came after the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm that is representing the homeowner, released a report last month saying that 12 states and the District of Columbia allow local governments and private investors to seize dramatically...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide a property rights dispute on whether government entities violate the Constitution when they seize homes for failure to pay taxes and then keep all the proceeds or allow private investors to profit. The justices will decide whether such seizures violate the takings clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which requires that the government pay compensation when property is taken. They will also weigh whether government action could be viewed as an excessive fine under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment. The justices will weigh a claim brought by Geraldine Tyler, a 93-year-old...

This abuse is intentional and must come to an end. ... In 2015, officials in Hennepin County seized an elderly woman's condo and sold it, over about $2,300 of unpaid property taxes, plus $12,700 in penalties, interest and fees. They sold that home for $40,000 and kept every penny, robbing elderly Geraldine Tyler of her home equity. And that's just one example. From 2014 through 2021, local governments in Minnesota seized and sold at least 1,350 Minnesota homes. The lost savings amounted to an average of $155,000 per home, or 90% of the home's value. Minnesota is one of 12...

CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) – The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia has ruled in a three-to-two vote that the is constitutional, according to West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Morrisey announced this afternoon, Oct. 6, 2022, that the court reversed the decision handed down by a Kanawha County Circuit Court judge that blocked the Hope Scholarship. West Virginia State Treasurer Riley Moore says the Hope Scholarship program will be up and running again “effective immediately.” “I want to thank the WV Supreme Court for ruling that the Hope Scholarship is constitutional!” Moore said. “This is a win for West...

BOISE, Idaho — A House committee on Friday introduced sweeping tax legislation that would raise Idaho’s sales tax to the highest in the nation while eliminating most property taxes on owner-occupied homes. The House Revenue and Taxation Committee approved a possible hearing on the bill that also uses some of the increased sales tax money to raise the grocery sales tax credit from $100 to $175. The move will bump Idaho’s sales tax from 6% to 7.85%, the highest in the nation, according to the nonprofit Tax Foundation group that analyzes tax policy. California currently has the highest sales tax...

Public schools reported a decrease in the number of students for the first time in 30 years, many of them in early grades. Enrollment in Colorado public schools dropped by close to 30,000 students this school year — the first year-to-year decrease the state’s public school system has reported in more than 30 years. ... The overall drop in enrollment equates to a 3.3% decrease, with some of Colorado’s 178 school districts suffering dips of nearly 10% from enrollment during the 2019-20 school year. That could have serious consequences for the state’s public education system and districts budgets, which are...

California’s Proposition 13, the successful 1978 initiative that limited property-tax increases, has long been considered the third rail of the state’s politics. Former governor Jerry Brown, coasting to victory in the 2014 gubernatorial election, called the constitutional amendment “a sacred doctrine that should never be questioned.” But now a coalition of public-sector unions, school districts, progressive advocacy groups, and Democratic politicians are betting that they can overturn at least half of Prop. 13, in the process enacting a huge tax increase on state businesses during a steep recession. Theirs promises to be a hard-fought battle, pitting rich unions against well-financed...

California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is behind on his property taxes again. Maybe this explains why the governor allowed his Napa Valley winery to stay open but ordered other wineries in the state to close down. ... Marin County Tax Collector's website currently lists Gov. Newsom's property taxes on his Kentfield estate as delinquent. Newsom did manage to pay his property taxes on his Sacramento mansion this year, but not without racking up a late-payment penalty of some $2,094.15. In March, Newsom became the first governor to issue a stay-at-home order in response to the Wuhan coronavirus. A month later,...

There is, perhaps, a glimmer of hope for people like Boise’s Kari Wardle. Kari, 40, juggles full-time employment and raising a 5-year-old boy, while caring for her terminally-ill mom. But it’s her rising property taxes that have her really rattled. “My wages don’t increase enough every year to offset these costs,” Wardle explained. “With medical expenses and my child, even with working a full time job, we are barely getting by. If property taxes increase again next year, I honestly have no idea what we will do!” Some relief, however, may be on its way, in the form of three...

Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances, and your prosperity.County government seizes home over $8.41 in unpaid taxWhen an 83-year old retiree paid his property taxes late, he miscalculated the interest owed to the county government.All told, he was $8.41 short. Yes you read that correctly, i.e. less than nine dollars.So the county seized the home over that trivial amount.Then they sold the man’s home at auction for $24,500, even though the house was worth about $128,000.But the...

With a laundry list of tax hikes proposed by Congress or Democratic candidates for president, it's understandable why many would view Washington as the biggest threat to taxpayers’ wallets. However, policymakers at the state and local level are just as likely to reach into taxpayers’ pockets as those in Washington, D.C. Take Election Day 2019, which featured nearly 1,000 tax and fiscal ballot measures.  Publicly-accessible data from secretaries of state and county election offices found 954 measures across 19 different states and hundreds of localities, most of which were negative measures that would impact taxpayers and businesses. There were at...

Larimer County property owners have received phony notices vis U.S. Mail stating a lien has been placed on their property for non-payment of taxes. The notice states federal tax authorities have placed a lien on their property for non-payment of taxes and will garnish wages and bank accounts, seize property or seize federal tax refunds to pay the debt, and to call a toll-free number --- to avoid enforcement. ... the letter is a fraudulent scam, to disregard the notice and also contact local law enforcement. “The federal government does not collect local property taxes, nor does it have authority...

Rahm Emanuel raised taxes to get city worker pension funds on a ‘path to solvency.’ The shortfall still ballooned by $7 billion. ... A record-high property tax increase. A new tax on water and sewer service. A higher 911 emergency fee on telephone lines... Emanuel’s series of tax hikes was painful, but he promised the extra money was part of a plan to get the woefully underfunded city worker pension funds on a “path to solvency.”.. in the four years since .. The pension funds are actually worse off. When Emanuel pushed through the tax hikes, the city worker retirement...

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

Vikki L. Pryor paid $757,000 for a four-bedroom, four-bath home at 1001 N. Euclid Ave. in northeast Oak Park in August 2005, or $975,657 in today’s dollars. The home sold on Feb. 26 for $590,000, or 40 percent less than what she paid for it. Pryor’s property taxes rose over the same period. They were $9,249 when she bought the home in 2005, an effective tax rate of 0.9 percent. Last year, they were twice that -- $20,652, or 3.5 percent of her sale price. All told, Pryor paid $207,132 in property taxes over 13 years of ownership. Pryor's story...

The mother of soak-the-rich congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that she was forced to flee the Big Apple and move to Florida because the property taxes were so high. “I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north. I’m paying $600 a year in Florida. It’s stress-free down here,” Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily Mail from her home in Eustis, a town of less than 20,000 in central Florida north of Orlando. The mother-of-two — who calls herself BOC — said she picked Eustis because a relative already lived there and right before Christmas 2016 she paid $87,000...

The mother of soak-the-rich Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she was forced to flee the Big Apple and move to Florida because the property taxes were so high. “I was paying $10,000 a year in real estate taxes up north. I’m paying $600 a year in Florida. It’s stress-free down here,” Blanca Ocasio-Cortez told the Daily Mail from her home in Eustis, a town of less than 20,000 in central Florida north of Orlando. The mother of two — who calls herself BOC — said she picked Eustis because a relative already lived there, and right before Christmas 2016, she paid...

In November 2018, voters will decide on Amendment 73, a state constitutional amendment which would increase income, property and corporate taxes in Colorado .... Amendment 73 effectively ends protections against continuous increases in residential property taxes. It increases the state residential property tax assessment rate for school districts. Commercial property will enjoy reduced rates. ... Amendment 73 reduces legislative oversight by locking increased spending into the state constitution. There is no guarantee that more spending will increase educational opportunities for existing students.

NEW HAVEN — More disappointing news for the city. Fitch has downgraded the city’s credit rating on the heels of a similar downgrade Wednesday from S&P Global Retings as New Haven gets ready to sell bonds around Aug. 2. Fitch downgraded the rating from A- to BBB, with a negative outlook from stable. S&P gave the city a BBB+ rating with a negative outlook. The new bonds are $58,030,000 to finance city and school projects and $160 million in refunding bonds, which will be used for debt service savings and to cover an estimated $15 million fiscal year 2018 deficit....