Every once in a while I write a line I’m particularly proud of. The other day I had just such an opportunity at the Treasury Department.
But first some background.
I work for the hearings division, which conducts hearings on tax matters when the Department and the taxpayer disagree on how much is due or whether a credit should be granted. One particular issue that comes up is known as the principal residence exemption, or PRE for short. This is a partial exemption from local property taxes for people who both own a home and occupy it as their principal residence. If the home is not their principal residence, they do not qualify even if they own it. Needless to say, we have lots of cases trying to determine what exactly is the principal residence of someone who travels/moves/rents other places for work. Additionally, the statute prohibits granting the exemption for someone who files income taxes in another state as a resident of that state (as opposed to as a nonresident).
In this particular case, the claimant spends winter out of state and summer at her home in Michigan. The Department, defending its denial of the exemption, pointed to several things that indicated that the out of state home and not the Michigan home should be considered her principal residence. Among others, it pointed out that she did not file Michigan income taxes. From that, the Department presumed that she did file income taxes in the other state, and then further presumed that she filed as a resident (with no documentation to support this claim).
My job was to analyze the weight of this argument. I first wanted to insist that that was too many presumptions to support the denial. After all, there was no evidence that she even needed to file income taxes.
Then it suddenly hit me. The Department’s argument had an even deeper flaw. And I could refute the argument in one sentence.
So here it is.
“The Department’s argument that Petitioner is statutorily barred by MCL 211.7cc(3)(d) on the assumption that she filed Texas income taxes as a resident is unpersuasive in light of the fact that Texas has no personal income tax.”
Next case please.
3 comments:
LOL... that is absolutely awesome! We need more people in the legal system with sense like yours!
Would that every case were that easy to refute :)
And the Lone Star State thereby makes up for the wonderful evidentiary issues that show up in my cases where someone claims they are married because they moved to Texas with someone else.
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