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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe this is an ignorant question, but how is residency fraud even possible? When I enrolled my kid in PK3 last month, I had to bring in my pay stub and my driver's license to demonstrate that I was a resident. How can it be enough to just use a friend or family member's address and say you live there?

Or maybe the further question is that if you're changing your tax withholdings to say you're a DC resident and you aren't, wouldn't that be tax fraud? Couldn't your state of residence (this primarily seems to happen in MD) come after you for unpaid taxes? And wouldn't you have to maintain that your residence is the DC address for as long as you have your child enrolled in the school?

I'm not saying residency fraud never happens, but it seems awfully complicated. [/quote]

For the W2 ... You don't necessarily change your withholdings permanently. For example, I can log into ADP and change my address anytime, which would change my withholding. The pay stub has to be within 45 days, so you can change it for a few weeks prior to registration. DC/MD/VA are quite accustomed to people working partial years in other jurisdictions and it's easy to sort it all out when you pay your taxes, no fraud committed.

Yes, you would need to do this every year.

Keep in mind there's a bunch of different documents you can use to prove residency. Doesn't have to be a pay stub, and doesn't have to be a driver's license.

[/quote]

This is why filed DC income taxes needs to be the minimum standard. If you paid taxes to DC (or were so poor that you filed and got money back), then you can enroll in DC schools. The kid MUST be a dependent on DC taxes for them to register. That, plus a photo ID issued by DC or the federal government, needs to be the bare minimum.

For people who move mid year after taxes are filed, they get the first year grace period, subject to a tuition clawback if they don't file DC taxes in the next year. Military families will have orders they can show to get them into the school; they also get in a massive amount of trouble if they defraud the government, so they are unlikely to scam.

However, you'll notice that OSSE is loathe to sync up tax records with enrollment records. They don't want to know the truth because so many federal and local tax dollars are at stake.[/quote]

So how does this account for divorced or non-married families? Are you then suggesting that the child has no right to attend a DC school if they don't live with the parent that is paying DC taxes? Because if that's the case then people who have no children in DC should be able to fully opt out of taxes that provide for school funding. My niece lives with her mother in MD, she's on her mother's taxes because that is who provides the majority of her care. Her father lives in DC and pays DC taxes. She's going to school in DC because she has a parent that is a resident and who pays taxes. In your scenario, her mother would have to stop claiming her as a dependent so that her father could claim her, even though the mother provides the majority of care. How is that fair and equitable?

The issue that I see is that it's an SES issue. Wealthier families are more likely to have a two-parent household where both parents reside in DC and there are no messy custodial issues to consider. Even if there is a divorce, it is likely that a higher income divorced parent is going to be able to remain in DC (higher living costs) vs having to move out to the suburbs. So in my opinion, going to a tax-based verification system would unduly penalize lower SES families. No thanks[/quote]

This is how it works all over the country. The residency requirement is wherever the child RESIDES, ie sleeps at least 50% of the time.

But frankly, I’d settle for DC enforcing its residency requirements where neither parent lives in DC. [/quote]

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