Reply to Vent: people who take the DC Homestead Deduction on properities they don't live in

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Reply to "Vent: people who take the DC Homestead Deduction on properities they don't live in"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't get it: can't the tax people see the deductions and rental income at the same time! Why can't they do it?
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It’s separate tax offices. The homestead deduction is granted by the real property tax office whereas a persons income tax filing is handled in another office.

DC has run audits in the past to address this because it’s so rampant, but not in a while. You can view the property tax assessment and billing history for any DC property online, so whenever we pay our tax bill I will look up bills for homes near us just to compare tax assessment. But that’s also how I know how rampant this is. We have multiple rentals on our block and they ALL still receive the homesteader deduction. One of them, the owner hasn’t lived there for almost 20 years— that’s more than 20k in tax revenue for that house alone!

I’m sure many of not most of these people just don’t know they are still getting the deduction. So partly I’m just annoyed with DC for not enforcing this more clearly, by requiring periodic proof of residency or something. But I also think the landlords have a duty to take care of this. The homestead deduction shows up in bold on your bill. It’s clear what it is. People who just decide to wait until they get in trouble for it annoy me. There should be a penalty of some kind to disincentivized that behavior.[/quote]

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