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Comment by iamnotamouse | Hacker News Reader

I think the title is confusing people. A more descriptive title might be, Supreme Court to decide if county can seize and sell $40k condo as penalty for $2k unpaid taxes, without giving back the excess value. It's not in question the government can penalize you for unpaid taxes by taking your property.

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In defending their power to do that the state has made an argument which seems convincing that they maybe ought to be permitted to hold-back legitimate and reasonable costs associated with the sale, but I don’t think has made a convincing case that they can just keep whatever excess value there is without there being a takings clause violation. I expect them to lose hard on this.

>In defending their power to do that the state has made an argument which seems convincing that they maybe ought to be permitted to hold-back legitimate and reasonable costs associated with the sale, but I don’t think has made a convincing case that they can just keep whatever excess value there is without there being a takings clause violation.

If the government can self-fund by targeted asset seizure, rather than allocation from the legislature, you create an incentive for abuse. Want to grow your team? Find another home to possess, have them work on it. I'm very skeptical of this idea. We've seen it go wrong with other forms of asset seizures, with traffic enforcement, etc. Sadly you are probably right that it's legal.

If private capital is no longer safe from unreasonable seizures in the course of simple settlements against debt that requires a strait forward liquidation… the system is getting pretty close to permanently fucked. Not as in slippery slope… as in “fucked”.

This isn’t woke this isn’t neocon, this isn’t even a left or right… this is “capitalism as a system is built upon the respect for the value of a person’s capital” sort of stuff. If the court doesn’t rule either extremely narrowly in favour, or outright against… the precedent set by this could be devastating to … basically everyone. “Oh sorry that mobile phone contract worth a couple of grand means we a private company now have the power to force you to sell your house and keep the profits of doing it ourselves and paying lawyers to sue you to force you if you refuse”… nothing here feels like this is unique to the state, I don’t see why they should have this power and no one else by following their arguments… this would set a dangerous precedent and I really hope they get told to pound sand, with prejudice.

Edit: Also I want to clarify. I understand that lawyers are going to do their job and argue for their clients. This is about the system as a whole. It makes sense that the government would try to do this, and makes sense to try and pay lawyers to argue the case.. it does not make sense to undermine the fundamentals of capitalism to treat debtors as an underclass like criminals who deserve nothing and can be legally robbed by anyone they owe a debt to.

I'd argue we passed that point once civil forfeiture became common. Your property can already be seized even without a debt that needs settling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

Look… I agree… but I can also understand the logic behind the fundamental concept of civil asset forfeiture. When you have a trunk full of drugs or cash and no one to point the finger at… it makes a twisted kind of sense to empower the state to simply sue the objects in question and allow the system to move forward efficiently.

What civil asset forfeiture had become is a god damn evil monstrosity… but the seed it grew from isn’t inherently damned… it’s the precedent and case law that has turned it into a twisted monster that is perpetuating abuse of the citizens of the United States of America.

Its mostly the incentives spurred by the Drug War federal decision to let individual LE agencies keep a share of proceeds of federal-law seizures they execute (most state forfeiture laws direct the proceeds to state general funds, so LE agencies don’t directlt profit from them) which created the problem, because it turned civil forfeiture into a funding stream detached from local government priorities for the agencies who participated.

Heh, the state/county will just find a way to add a $36k filing fee most likely if it doesn't go their way

A representative of this tax office said that the office does not turn a profit on these tax sales, it loses money. Which is believable because this woman was given 5 years to pay the $2300 bill or sign up for a repayment program. There are repayment programs that require a person to pay as little as 3% of their income per year. The county wasn't pushing her out the door to get their hands on her wealth, they tried repeatedly over multiple years to get her to make an effort and she never did anything.

What I would guess will happen is that the court will rule that keeping the excess equity is unconstitutional, but assessing fees equal to the cost of running the program is not, so they will raise the fees to compensate. Which will be good for some and bad for some, but feel more reasonable overall.

Yeah, so, if the tax office applied specific penalties for the delay, accounted for cost of sale, and deducted those specific costs, assessed with due process and challengable on their own merits, before refunding any excess value, that would be one thing.

But “we don’t profit in net from this practice so we should be free to keep arbitrary and unlimited excess proceeds from every individual subject regardless of the actual bill and reasonable costs in the specific case” is simply not a viable takings clause argument as I see it. And I think the Supreme Court majority is less favorable to the government on taking clause issues in general than I am...

Oh you paid online? We charge a $36k "convenience fee" for online payments.

A $40k condo that the owner only wasn't upside-down on because part of the seizure process was zeroing out the mortgage, unless the government's lawyer was just flat-out lying on NPR this morning.

[EDIT] To be fair, it might have sold for more than the mortgage balance in an ordinary sale, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to demand the government put in extra effort to maximize sale price, in cases like this. I do think this practice deserves some scrutiny, but IMO this is a pretty poor exemplar-case and the details seem to be rather overstated in much of the coverage and reactions.

The county should not get to keep the excess. The mortgage should not be zeroed out, the bank should get the excess, then the owner. Right?

Yeah, barring some compelling argument otherwise, I'd think the mortgage-holder is the one owed money here, and since it seems like most states make this system work without keeping profit from sales, I'm skeptical that compelling argument exists.

Of course it’s in question. Taxes must be apportioned according to the Constitution. This is a direct tax.

> Of course it’s in question. Taxes must be apportioned according to the Constitution.

Federal taxes, other than those on income, maybe, but this is not about federal taxes.

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