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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

This is a win for sanity, but not a huge win. The court is simply saying if you owe $15,000 in taxes, the local government can take your home, sell it for $40,000 and they can only keep $15,000 of that rather than keeping all the proceeds. Wait, what? Back up a second. Why the hell can the county simply take your home in the first place? The court didn't address the heinous practice of Tax Foreclosure at all. If someone owes a debt, place a lein on the property that prevents it from being sold until the owner makes good... or work out some kind of installment plan. It should not be legal to simply -yoink- take someone's home that they paid for and rely on for shelter. That's pretty messed up.

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> If someone owes a debt, place a lein on the property that prevents it from being sold until the owner makes good... or work out some kind of installment plan.

I can’t speak for every jurisdiction, but I do know that offering installment plans is a standard part of tax repayment plans.

These situations don’t occur until the back tax amount is relatively large. It takes many years and ignoring many, many tax collection attempts to reach this level of back taxes.

I understand why you’d want to prohibit this type of asset seizure, but you need to consider the unintended consequences: Many people would stop paying taxes if there was no real consequence for doing so. If you’re a shady landlord who intends to rent a house out forever and never sell it, why would you bother paying taxes if the laws prevented the government from actually collecting them from you?

Well, this is the state we're talking about... the threat of 30-60 days in jail might be sufficient to scare most small-time tax dodgers into line. Anyone bigger than that's probably already legally avoiding taxes in the first place anyways.

Debtors prison isn’t something people have fond memories of

The government can use less-cruel ways to collect owed taxes from people who don't or can't pay, including [as mentioned] liens and negotiated payment plans, or even income garnishment and private debt collection. Even that would be more humane than stealing someone's home and kicking them out to live on the street.

They could also make exceptions for owner-occupied vs. investment property. It's one thing to seize (or threaten to seize) someone's profitable business assets to force them to pay their taxes, it's another thing altogether to force an old lady out of her only home onto the street.

Finally, they could even simply accept the reality that a certain percentage of very poor homeowners just cannot afford their taxes, accept this humanely, and budget accordingly. I'd be willing to pay 0.5% more or whatever on my property taxes if it meant Tax Foreclosures were abolished.

What about the case where it's no longer the owner's primary residence, such as this exact case where the woman had moved to elderly care facility?

Unless Tax Forfeiture was happening because the counties could get excess profit off the forfeiture.

If it costs more money to sell the house at face value of taxes owed then the state may be deterred.

Unless, corruption occurs where a tax hike is implemented one year causing undue hardship, forfeiture happens, houses are seized, sold at the value of tax shortfall to a “unrelated private citizen” and then sold off for profit, profit then being somehow funneled into the local politician who made that unreasonable tax hike?

Prop 13 in California doesn’t exist for just any old reason…

Many states make special processes available to delay or prevent property tax foreclosure on homesteads. I believe Minnesota does, but in this case, the owner had moved in 2010 and taxes were unpaid for 5 years. Not sure why 5 years of non-payment on a vacant house (well condo) isn't enough time to start proceedings to foreclose?

But, the county shouldn't get to keep the complete proceeds from the sale; they should get their duly owed taxes and fees, any expenses from the sale, and that's it. Any excess should go to leins and secured, perfected debt holders, and any remaining should go to the owner. Anything else doesn't make sense.

There could also be a question of how $2,300 in unpaid taxes aquires $13,300 in interest and penalties in a near zero interest rate environment, but that's doesn't seem to be disputed in this case.

The Supreme Court's job is not to legislate.

I swear I don't mean this in a snarky way: I don't quite understand how, functionally, interpreting the law is all that different from creating it. Deciding to interpret a law one way or the other (because of the ambiguity of language and intent behind laws) has impacts on people's lives, the freedoms they have, what rules they are subject to, etc.

It's not, and in a lot of ways is more powerful

People argue this point a lot. As an example, Miranda rights are an affirmative requirement - that is legislating from the bench, but people like it so don't complain.

I'd highly recommend a podcast called 'Five Four' where they talk about the supreme court as a political body, rather than as the impartial "balls and strikes" role that if purports to be.

You can certainly create legislation while pretending you are just interpreting text.

Roe vs Wade is an excellent example of this. Which is why finally getting rid of it was a good thing.

Their job is to apply the Constitution, and in this case the Constitutional principle is quite clear (so clear that it led to a 9-0 decision). Specifically, the "takings clause" of the Fifth Amendment: "... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Eminent domain is well established; the court is unlikely to ever overturn this no matter the make up, and they probably shouldn’t as that’s a political question.

That said, the facts of this case didn’t support taking this any further than they did. The woman in question had practically abandoned the property, ignored all the notices, and had ample opportunity to try and pay what she owed (which was not originally $15K).

She took exception only after the County profited from the Sale. I mean, honestly it wasn’t a favorable case for her but for the fact the Court wanted an opportunity to address this specific moral hazard.

> Eminent domain is well established; the court is unlikely to ever overturn this no matter the make up, and they probably shouldn’t as that’s a political question.

I think the bigger issue is that it is expressly Constitutional with terms laid out in the Constitution, not that it is a political question.

True.

That’s not mutually exclusive though: addressing eminent domain is still a political question for those that choose to pursue it, and you can still lobby your legislature to curtail it.

They should do income garnishment like the IRS. If they don’t have income to garnish, then maybe they can’t pay the taxes at all. In that case, maybe keeping the collections in place and the garnishment in case they make money in the future and collect from their eventual estate. This is probably better than making people homeless.

Are there many situations where court-certified debt can't be recovered by selling assets?

1. Buy most property in the county. 2. Don't pay taxes. 3. County goes out of business. 4. Profit?

I'm assuming they foreclose, because in the same way like banks they have their own series of expenses that 'the public' voted to spend that need paid.

Yeah that the problem being solved: the rich person who does something dumb with their money such as buying up all properties in one county to try and play mafia.

I think regardless we should celebrate small wins. After all, small wins lead to bigger wins. In the courts, it’s builds a legal precedent. We really should be celebrating. There’s always more to do and more to criticize, yes. But, we have to celebrate the small wins as they come, otherwise it’s just bitterness and resentment. All sides being happy: that’s a win win win. And we really need that right now in the 2020s..

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