From Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird:
Tax officials in Valparaiso, Ind., admitted in February that they mistakenly valued one house at $400 million (though its previous assessment was $121, 900), and even though they re-computed the owner’s bill, they failed to erase from the city budget the $8 million in tax revenue they were expecting from the property, including $3 million that they already had disbursed.
Kinda makes a tax-and-spend politician sound pretty good, don’t you think?
[Source: Arizona Daily Star]
OMG, now THAT is going to give some of these crooked local politicians and bureaurats some ideas, now they have a way to cover up the money they steal! Juggle some numbers here, add 5 zero’s to the values of some properties there, and what do you know, the money they stole from the County Fund is now magically replaced!
It was appraised (incorrectly) at $400 million, so $8 million probably would have been about right (depending on the tax rate).
How were they expecting $8 million from this house? What is that over the next 10 decades?
I hope they didn’t spend that money on pay raises for the city’s tax officials.