Boston officials determined yesterday that Suzanne M. Bump, the Democratic candidate for state auditor, was not entitled to four years of tax breaks she received by reporting her South Boston condominium as her principal residence and accepted the $5,875.05 repayment she made Thursday after the discrepancy came to light
http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
Appears to be one principal residence too many.
In a letter yesterday to Bump, Rakow said the department had confirmed that Bump and her husband were registered to vote in Great Barrington, a small town in the southwest corner of the state, and had registered their motor vehicles there.
“Finally, we have noted on your campaign website a statement indicating that you and your husband reside at the property in Great Barrington, but spend your work week in Boston,” Rakow wrote. As a result, he said, the city would accept the repayment.
I’m not sure how easy a mistake this is to make, so I’m not sure what to make of this development. Is this somethign one can confuse and mistake, or is it an obvious tax dodge that people do but don’t get caught for because they aren’t running for office?
thought. If the first, you have to ask yourself whether this person has any claim to competency in holding the auditor position. Neither of these outcomes are a positive for her.
There is no way she did not understand that she was not supposed to claim more than one primary residence. I have no doubt that many owners of multiple homes pull the same stunt, but that is no excuse. Because of this I doubt that I will vote for her.
my friend Brian and I ran a query that returned hundreds of instances of people appearing to get the residential exemption on more than one property- within the City of Boston itself. I showed the results to my supervisor, but I’m not sure exactly what steps were taken to address the issue. Checking data across jurisdictions would be a lot harder, of course.
The Cape is a locus for this stuff. And in addition to claiming the two properties, they want to vote at town meeting based on being property owners, too! (I remember one conversation with a nice man from Lincoln who was kvetching about a betterment he would have to pay at his million dollar home, demanding why he couldn’t vote against the project at town meeting. I reminded him he was free to change his legal residence to the Cape and we’d love to see him next April, but he barked at me, “My accountant says I need to LIVE here, even if I’m never here!”)
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p>I’ve talked to town clerks about this, and they all say they’d like to see a Social Security number to claim the exemption, which could be matched against a state database. And make a note of joint filers, too, where the husband declares ONE primary residence and the wife ANOTHER so they can get both (this didn’t occur to the Bumps?). This has been shot down on ‘invasion of privacy’ grounds, but really – what do you think?
mostly, in my mind, because of the auto.
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p>If she had registered her primary residence in Southie, that’s fine with me — she presumably sleeps there about 4 nights a week minus holidays, and that’s right around 50% of the time. Had she registered her car in Southie, fine. Her husband may not spend 50% of his time in Boston, and if the ownership was set up right, no reason why he’s not eligible for the homeowner’s exemption where his primary residence is, Western MA. Note that a residential exemption is a flat amount; it’s not tied to the number of people who live there.
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p>No question it was an attempt at a legal tax dodge — no different from filling up with gas when you’re at your last exit in NJ or NH, or saving up your purchasing until sales tax free day. Was her particular scheme legal? Dunno.
…that if she first got away with this it says more about the tax code than about her. This is also another argument for sales taxes which just asks what you are buying. It really shouldn’t matter how much of your time you spend in which house.
is to give you a break if you are living in your own home rather than renting it out. These kind of residential tax exemptions are quite common. Even with some multi-home owners lying in order to evade their property taxes, most towns are better off with such an imperfectly enforceable provision.
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p>I totally disagree with your suggestion that this does not say much about her. I can understand people making honest mistakes in filing their taxes, but it seems that this was no mistake. She had to have known that you can only have one primary residence.
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or have someone do them for her? It may not matter to some people, but, you know, stuff happens. I get the feeling it happens to more affluent people all the time.
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p>I’m relatively poor and get money back every year, but, math not being my strong point, I have someone else do my taxes.