"Bi-coastal Tax Chutzpah: CA & NY Congressmen Say They Live in Maryland to Claim Property Tax Break on Million Dollar Vacation Homes":
Prof. Paul Caron at TaxProf Blog blogs about this, and links to various news stories. I don't know tax law well enough to have an informed opinion, but Caron does know tax law, and seems to think there is indeed some misbehavior there.
So, if these 2 Congressmen claimed Maryland as their "primary residence" on election Tuesday in November, shouldn't they be removed from the House? Can they be a "resident" of Maryland while at the same time being an "inhabitant" of the states they represent? Query, who has standing to seek their removal through judicial proceedings? Any taxpayer? Or only a resident of the district which they claim to represent?
Nice of you to bend over backwards to defend the Congresscritters (usually they just have us bend over forwards), but based on the provided link California Congressman Pete Stark's Maryland "primary residence" is described as "lakefront" and New York Congressman Elliot Engle's Maryland home was formerly owned by ABC's Ted Koppel and Wonder Woman Lynda Carter. I'm thinking these were not pre-fab...
Yeah, but Koppel liked to make a spectacle of himself by mixing with the gangbangers in Compton, Watts and South Central L.A. and who knows about Wonder Woman.
I thought the Constitution (article 1, section 5) said only the House can adjudicate its members qualifications and the like. Thus some member would have to make a motion to expel them.
Kevin
One can be "an inhabitant" of several states. For the purposes of the tax break, Stark says that primary residence is Maryland. I don't know that CA excludes him from representing a CA district if he has a primary residence elsewhere, but it would be interesting to see if he claims a "homeowners exemption" for his CA residence (if any). That exemption is only available on primary residences and (IIRC) there can be only one according to CA law.
I do wonder if Stark files income taxes in both Maryland and CA and if he files as a non-resident in one of them.
Filing as a non-resident in CA would allow him to protect much of his congressional salary from CA's income tax, which is among the highest in the nation. Unless the CA legislature decided that congress critters shouldn't pay.
Offer a gigantic tax break to lure rich politicians into buying big(ger) houses in MD . . .
Then take it away from them after they've bought the house.
Stark's house is in Anne Arundel County, on the Chesapeake Bay I think, not a lake. Anne Arundel's cap is 2%--the taxable value can only increase 2% annually. Obviously, over the past 10-15 years, this has saved the good congressman an awful lot of money.
So, "take it away"? I don't think so. Common sense dictates he's either a resident of Maryland or California. If he's a resident of California, he shouldn't get the property tax break. If he's a resident of Maryland, he shouldn't be representing California in Congress.
Seems pretty simple. But the lawyers are about to get hold of it...
How did Engle vote on the bailout bonus tax bill? You know what they say about people who live in glass houses.
formerly owned by (ABC's Ted Koppel) and (Wonder Woman Lynda Carter),
not
formerly owned by (ABC's Ted Koppel and Wonder Woman Lynda Carter).
Okay, if you're going to get partisan about this, wasn't it a far great fraud when Dick Cheney changed his voter registration from Texas to Wyoming so as not to be from the same state as George Bush when he was in fact not a resident of Wyoming
And I honestly don't care what political party Engle and Stark belong to--if they were Republicans, I would find it just as deplorable.
Bill Poser - Special Olympian?
I wonder what's Barack's teleprompter has to say about this?
a "million-dollar" home in Maryland isn't really all that grand.
how about a "quarter million dollar" annual income then? it sounds only one-fourth as grand as a "million dollar" something, but apparently is the definition of rich!
Cheney and Hillary might have been opportunistic in their moves, but at least they didn't go back and claim benefits from their previous states of residence ... at least none that we are aware of.
I expect, though am not sure, that more congressmen and senators live in VA, which has somewhat lower state income taxes (and no state estate tax), than in MD. And I doubt that Stark and Engel are all that exceptional with regard to this tax question.
In Stark's case, he still holds a California driver's license registered at a California address and presumably has a domicile there, so that's enough to make him a resident. Since California has many wealthy residents, it makes it deliberately difficult to lose California residency. Since Stark didn't take the necessary steps to lose California residency, he should still represent his state in Congress but ought to cough up the tax money to Maryland.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.