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

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I thought DC was pretty on top of it because when I called in to asked about my tax returns awhile ago, I was told that I cannot claim the homestead. I never did. I received a first time home-buyers credit which dragged on for years and years, and I did live in it  several years after buying. Not sure what the tax office person meant "can't claim taxes or homestead if it's rental", but I got my refund soon after. Instead of saying that they were behind, she claimed to have something wrong with my taxes on the property. That's where I got the idea that they check for homestead. Just not sure where she got the idea that I had one.[/quote]

I think they go through periods of heavy enforcement and then lay off. Ironically, the reason they don’t enforce this more aggressively is because running property tax audits is pricy. So they don’t staff for it all the time.

They should really come up with a mechanism that would catch violators more cheaply. Like a system that cross referenced taxpayer addresses against real property records so if someone paid income taxes, registered to vote, or got a drivers license at an address other than the one for which they were getting a homestead deduction, it would trigger a targeted audit.

Instead I think they rely on people to do the right thing, which obviously isn’t going to work.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics