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Left with Nothing

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Left with Nothing

#181

Post by dannypgh »

bolder88 wrote: post #88
to3m wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think income tax has proven a big disincentive for people to go out and work? (To ancitipate an obvious rebuttal: yes, I will admit that inheritance tax has probably put people off the idea of dying.)

Higher rate income tax certainly does. Tax bands certainly provide a big disincentive for bothering to get a better job/raise. Inheritance tax is very unfair. If you are rich enough, you'll plan around it and avoid it. But if you're not rich enough, your kids will not only lose their parents, they'll be sent a bill from the government. Which at best is a tad insensitive. Add to that the fact that the thresholds for i…

Inheritance taxes aren't an issue if the estate is valued - this is after all expenses, debts, etc. have been taken care of- at less than $5.25 million.

Numbers vary, but it's definitely fewer than 5% and possibly fewer than 1% of households that need to do anything at all to avoid the estate tax. And these are people who have benefited immensely from services provided by the government (if only the services that keeps people from stealing their wealth!) and are really doing quite alright; adjusting the tax code to make them do even better seems unfair.

Secondly I have never heard of anyone who didn't want to make more money because of their tax bracket. I do not believe this phenomenon exists, and even if it did, it wouldn't strike me as all that much of a problem in a population with unemployment as high as our own.

Re: Left with Nothing

#182

Post by afterburner »

jamieb wrote: post #86
afterburner wrote: post #31

The logical outcome of this kind of predatory practice should be that the "investor" (the purchaser of the liens) gets $5000 out of the $197,000 sale, and the debtor gets $192,000. And even that seem predatory, never mind getting all the equity and forcing the person out of their place of residence.

when someone gets your $197,000 house for $134, they can sell it for $71,000 and take $6000 in legal fees, interest etc, as documented in the article. The owner loses $130,000. Don't be surprised if the person buying the house for $71,000 is in on the game too.

Ahhh... I use Noscript and the result is when I scroll down about 20 lines there's blank space, so I stopped reading and figured it was the end of a very short article...

So the $197,000 was likely the appraised value, with the $71,000 the actual sale value when the predators unloaded it.

But it sounds from the article like the original owner does lose everything, which I hope is so ridiculous as to be untrue, but I can't tell...

EDIT: I wonder if I got downvoted for using Noscript, or what...

Re: Left with Nothing

#183

Post by rayiner »

jnardiello wrote: post #170
rayiner wrote: post #158

The article doesn't come out and say it, but the impetus for tax sales is that foreclosure proceedings are pretty onerous and take forever. At the same time, property taxes are the primary source of revenue for the local government and must be collected. So it doesn't seem ridiculous at face value to sell the debt to private investors and let them do the collection while being able to recoup the fees involved in fore…

Which still seems totally fine and fair, right? Great, keep up with the great job!

The alternative is for the district to carry the burden of foreclosing, which costs taxpayers money (foreclosures are involved to protect homeowners) or alternatively just forgiving the tax debts of Alzheimer's patients.

These foreclosure don't just happen one day. They happen after six months of warnings, letters, phone calls, etc.

Re: Left with Nothing

#184

Post by cantrevealname »

nowarninglabel wrote: post #171
cantrevealname wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your two-sentence summary is better than the entire article in understanding what's going on. I read the whole article, and I somehow missed that sentence buried in the middle of the story. So Mr. Coleman wasn't "left with nothing" but presumably received something like $65,000 (i.e., $71,000 minus $6,000 or whatever the final legal bill was). Nowhere does the article say exactly what he received in the end. The way…

No, that's not what happened at all. Try reading again. >The Maryland company that took Coleman’s house sold it for $71,000 two months after evicting him. The company was owned by Steven Berman, who was convicted in 2008 in the Maryland bid-rigging case. He declined to comment. The law firm for Berman’s company said it was willing to reduce Coleman’s bill to $3,500 but could not reach him.

> No, that's not what happened at all.

What part are you saying I still don't understand? The point I was trying to make is that Mr. Coleman does get some money from the sale, although unjustly much less than the house is worth. But the reporter is obscuring this simple fact.

Re: Left with Nothing

#185

Post by denzil_correa »

Does or shouldn't this contradict some law set by the government themselves? I need to do some research on the origins of taxes now. This seems unbelievable to me, I'm literally dumbfounded.

Re: Left with Nothing

#186

Post by rayiner »

staccatomeasure wrote: post #102
jamieb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when someone gets your $197,000 house for $134, they can sell it for $71,000 and take $6000 in legal fees, interest etc, as documented in the article. The owner loses $130,000. Don't be surprised if the person buying the house for $71,000 is in on the game too.

This problem is indicative of how screwed up our legal system is. Lawyers harass regular folks at-will as most people have no recourse (i.e. money to hire their own lawyer, or knowledge of the expanding and complicated laws). Two ways I can think of fixing it - one is offering simple, straightforward hearings in front of a judge with the power to use their own judgement (instead of relying on overly-specific, exploit…

What do you think was happening in the months and months before the lien sale happened? There were a million opportunities to avoid the whole process through a straightforward administrative process, no lawyers involved.

Re: Left with Nothing

#187

Post by switch007 »

"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Why does that section of the 14th amendment not apply?

Re: Left with Nothing

#188

Post by denzil_correa »

macspoofing wrote: post #145
denzil_correa wrote: post #104

Sorry but WTH?!! 134/197000 is 0.068%. And if this was not enough, I read this - A 95-year-old church choir leader lost her family home to a Maryland investor over a tax debt of $44.79 while she was struggling with Alzheimer’s in a nursing home. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with people in the world.

I think so too. Forget the laws, if you're a "investor" who bought a tax lean for $50, and that lean led you to own the deed to a $100,000-$200,000 house of Alzheimer's patient, don't you stop for a second and consider the moral and ethical implications of collecting on that lean?

Ethics? I would want to know how is that even an apropos penalty given the defaulter's age and mental health. This is literally bordering on the insanity!

Re: Left with Nothing

#189

Post by snitko »

gnaritas wrote: post #156
snitko wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No difference. Why do US citizens have to pay for wars and killing a great number of innocent people in them, or Guantanamo, or NSA, or TSA... when the majority clearly opposes it? Democracy is a nice myth, which gives surfs a false feeling of satisfaction and control, obscuring the reality, which is that you are being robbed. "You can always leave", as has been noted before, is another myth: yes, spend 5-6 years on…

In a democracy, the government and the citizens are not different parties; they are citizens and their incentive is that they have to live here as well even after they're no longer in power. To say governments never care about their citizens is silly, a government is not one mind, it's a collection of said citizens.

Theoretically. In practice, as soon as you get power, you have very little incentive to serve those who elected you and all the incentives in the world to make money from special interest groups. You can't fix that with any number of new rules and legislation. Instead, think about this: why do you need some people sitting in a pathetic building ruling over you? Why do you think society cannot do without them and what is it that only governments can do, but people and companies can't?

Re: Left with Nothing

#190

Post by muzz »

do-it-good wrote: post #140
staccatomeasure wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This problem is indicative of how screwed up our legal system is. Lawyers harass regular folks at-will as most people have no recourse (i.e. money to hire their own lawyer, or knowledge of the expanding and complicated laws). Two ways I can think of fixing it - one is offering simple, straightforward hearings in front of a judge with the power to use their own judgement (instead of relying on overly-specific, exploit…

The complexity of the laws is not a coincidence: 1. It gives more power to the government and less power to the people. 2. The majority of lawmakers are lawyers - complexity means them more job/business opportunities and significance in society.

Did you even read the article?

It points out this arose from a change in 2001 that occurred because the agency was trying to do LESS work, not more.

"But the work overwhelmed the agency, and in 2001, city leaders made a critical change: They told investors to head directly to court to file a foreclosure case. The move empowered investors to start charging legal fees and court costs — a game changer that allowed them to turn minor delinquencies into insurmountable debts."

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