Your tax dollar at work
Remember the government’s “first time home buyer” tax credit of $8000 designed to help the sluggish housing industry? Well, it seems that it has done far more than that.
Yesterday we learned from J. Russell George, the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, that more than 14,000 tax filers filed for and received the tax credit when they didn’t deserve it. No big deal, you say? Well, as it turns out, that more than $26.7 million in credits were obtained by people who didn’t deserve them.
An innocent mistake, you say…people just didn’t understand the tax forms? Not exactly. 1300 prison inmates applied for and were granted the tax credit to the tune of more than $9 million.
And, were that not enough to make your blood boil, George’s report also points out that,
[a] common scam had multiple taxpayers using the sale of a single home, with each claiming the credit. One home was used by 67 tax filers…
So, what does Representative John Lewis (D. Ga.), chairman of the House Ways and Means oversight subcommittee have to say about this?
Last year, we learned that children and persons who did not purchase homes were fraudulently claiming the first-time homebuyer credit,… [a]lthough I am pleased that the fraud identified earlier does not continue, I am concerned about prisoners claiming the credit.
He’s concerned…that’s it? Oh, heck, I forgot, it’s not his money.