Do Property Tax Consultants Need To Be Reined In?
This legislation was sold on the notion that COTA had become broken: inefficient, untimely and unfair to taxpayers. I served nearly a decade at COTA and I can report, without reservation, that COTA’s efficiency, timeliness and fairness was probably as good or better than it had been for years. COTA had recently implemented a new paperless case and document management system (with private grant money no less!), and it had cut its staff nearly in half. COTA also was about as caught up on its case load as it had been at any time during my tenure. Ironically and disingenuously, the only cases that were delayed were cases in which an attorney affiliated with a tax consultant had filed a motion with COTA for an extension to submit post-trial briefs. With respect to the claim of unfairness to taxpayers, COTA ran the numbers and found that it had decided cases in taxpayers’ favor approximately 49% of the time, a percentage generally consistent with previous years. All of this was presented to, but ignored by, the legislature. By then, the narrative was firmly rooted, and facts weren’t about to change anything
Clergy Housing Tax Break Withstands Challenge – Atheist Group Lacks Standing
The legal problem with challenging the exclusion has always been standing.It is hard to argue in court against a tax break that somebody else is getting. The judges tell you that it is no skin off your nose and that you should write your Congressman. Of course, the judges put it much more eloquently, but that’s the gist of it.
In order to obtain standing Freedom From Religion Foundation started paying a couple of its officers a housing allowance. Since they would rather have you call them late for breakfast than “minister of the gospel”, they did not exclude the allowance from their income when they filed their returns. Judge Barbara Crabb thought it would be silly to require the FFRF officers to file refund claims that they IRS would deny in order to have standing to sue. The Seventh Circuit did not agree:
Follow Me
Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.