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No Tax Adjustments for Million Dollar Homes
(by Candy Koenemann Berlin - March 24, 2010)
No Tax Adjustments for Million Dollar Homes
Editor:
A 3/6/10 article in the Free Press motivated me to write to all Vermont State Legislators. Summarizing the letter, the article states that 30 Charlotte homeowners were found eligible for the maximum $8000 property tax adjustment. These houses were valued between $740,900 and $2.17 million.
One way for this to happen in our current system is that the HI-144 Household Income Form allows some owners within the law to claim low income yet live in extremely expensive homes. They claim low income from business losses but do not have to report their gross receipts. This is legitimate in filing a tax return but is grossly unfair when used to qualify for a benefit program meant to bring relief to truly needy homeowners. Other homeowners who live in modest homes and earn in excess of the approximately $97,000 income limit receive nothing at all. There is a huge problem with this program when someone who can afford to live in a multi-million dollar home is given property tax assistance.
Limiting the amount of the property tax adjustment is important but it is even more important to put a limit on the qualifying housesite value to eliminate dispersing these high adjustments to people with sufficient assets to pay their taxes. If $97,000 is the eligibility income limit, then there should be a limit to the value of the homes.
Go the VT Tax Dept. website at http://tax.vermont.gov, click on “Statistics” on the left side. Then click on the report “Property Tax Adjustments” on the right side. Select “Total Tax Adjustment Distribution” to see the number of recipients and dollar amounts from $.01 to the $8000 cap. 114,931 homeowners received a total of $154,818,988 (as of 9/4/2009) and of those, 411 homeowners received the $8000 maximum for a total of $3,288,000.
Vermont is in an alarming financial state and immediate action is needed to stop taxpayers' money from going to people who should not be qualifying for the benefit. Please contact your legislative representatives to request that this be made a priority to help get our spending under control before another huge amount of taxpayer money is given out unfairly and inappropriately. This is not about blaming anyone, just asking that it be fixed.
Candy Koenemann
Berlin
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