Sunday, August 13, 2006

Another Republican tax scam

This time it is Rep. Gary Miller, R-Diamond Bar who is cheating big time on his taxes. Unlike the Republican Oil Company giveaway and the Paris Hilton tax cut, this is his personal fund raiser, much like Fat Denny Hasterts land deal.The LA Times has the straight skinny on his patently transparent scheme.
When U.S. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar) sold 165 acres to the city of Monrovia in 2002, he made a profit of more than $10 million, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in Congress. Ordinarily, he would have had to pay state and federal taxes of up to 31% on that profit.

Instead, Miller told the Internal Revenue Service and the state that Monrovia had forced him to sell the property under threat of eminent domain. That allowed him to shelter the profits from capital gains taxes for more than two years before he had to reinvest the money.

But there is a problem with Miller's claim: Monrovia officials say that Miller sold the land willingly and that they didn't threaten to force him to sell.

Miller, whose 42nd Congressional District includes chunks of Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties, claimed the same exemption in two subsequent Fontana property transactions, allowing him to continue sheltering his profits from the Monrovia sale. And in each of those cases, the purchasers say eminent domain, which allows a government agency to force a sale if it's in the public interest, was neither used nor threatened.
And the funds used for the first sale were prohibited by law from being used in a forced sale. This is a classic tax cheat and would probably have been discovered and prosecuted by a non politicized IRS. But in the Bushovik world, everything is political. Sadly, he does not appear to be activly opposed in this election cycle.

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