Will the Blunts be required to pay fines for their illegal homestead tax benefits?
Roll Call is reporting that five other Members of Congress will be required to pay back taxes for their own illegal homestead tax benefits.
The District of Columbia will not impose interest payments or penalties on a handful of House lawmakers who inadvertently received a property tax break intended for city residents, reducing the one-time corrective bills by a combined $23,000.
However, the tax situation for Roy and Abigail Blunt is different than almost every other Members of Congress caught with an improper homestead tax break. The typical homestead tax problem occurs when a Member buys a new property in DC, and the tax break is automatically applied to the property.
In contrast, Abigail Pearlman was already a DC resident, and then became a Missouri resident in 2004 when she became Abigail Pearlman Blunt. The Blunts were required to end their homestead status by filling out a one-page form, but did not.
As of late last week, the tax office had yet to complete its review of the tax status of a three-bedroom Georgetown home owned by Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
District records show the home is currently assessed at $1.6 million but taxed at $1.55 million.
According to a recent Kansas City Star report that prompted the District’s review, Blunt and his wife, Abigail Perlman Blunt, had asked D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans to correct the tax status as early as 2004.
A copy of an April 2, 2009, letter written by Evans and provided by Blunt’s office states that Abigail Blunt requested the change at the time she became a Missouri resident.
In addition, Blunt’s office provided a printout of D.C. tax records dated March 23, 2009, showing that Blunt was not receiving the homestead benefit. That record is no longer available from the District’s online tax records, however, because that information was replaced at the start of the current tax year, April 1.
As we've previously reported, the Blunts were receiving the homestead tax benefit through at least March 14 (click here for the documentation), and had never bothered to follow up on the request they allegedly made to DC Councilman Jack Evans. The responsibility fell squarely to the Blunts, and they failed to rectify the situation.
The Roll Call article correctly observes that Abigail Blunt appears as a registered voter in the online District database. However, Abigail has been a registered voter in Missouri since 2004.
Following up on previous claims. Two weeks ago, Blunt spokesman (and Matt Blunt's former deputy chief of staff) Rich Chrismer claimed that the Blunt Team "checked the record to ensure that the D.C. government’s records correctly showed Mrs. Blunt as not receiving the provision." Last week, the only proof they could provide to Roll Call of their claims was a printout from March 2009 showing that the homestead credit had been removed. As we suspected, the "check" had occurred quite recently, and not at any point in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 or 2008.
