BUSINESS
By Natalie Sherman, The Baltimore Sun | May 5, 2014
The city will conduct its annual tax sale this month in an effort to boost tax rolls, but some critics say it's a quick fix that contributes to one of Baltimore's most entrenched problems - vacant properties. City officials scheduled about 10,000 tax liens to go to auction this year. That's a small fraction of the 240,000 properties that owed money on property taxes or other city bills as of July 1, and less than half of the roughly 23,800 listed in advertisements in March. Those properties represented about $125 million in unpaid bills.
BUSINESS
By Jamie Smith Hopkins and Lorraine Mirabella, The Baltimore Sun | March 21, 2013
Add the Internal Revenue Service to the list of Berger cookies' woes. The IRS filed a notice of a nearly $109,000 tax lien against DeBaufre Bakeries - which makes the Baltimore treat - with the Baltimore City Circuit Court in February. Most of that amount was due in 2010, with smaller amounts due in 2009 and 2011, according to the court document. The IRS also filed notices of an approximately $14,000 lien in September and a lien of about $26,000 in October, for tax periods in 2006, 2011 and 2012.
BUSINESS
By Steve Kilar and The Baltimore Sun | November 9, 2012
The IRS may be coming for the Maryland unemployment office's offices. The federal tax collection agency filed a legal claim called a tax lien last month against the unemployment office's property. The Internal Revenue Service claims that the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation's Office of Unemployment Insurance owes the federal government about $850,000 in unpaid taxes, according to court records. The tax lien was filed in order to encourage the debt to be paid - even though DLLR filed an appeal of its tax assessment in August and claims it does not owe the money the IRS has billed, said Dennis Morton, the unemployment office's director of contributions.
BUSINESS
Jamie Smith Hopkins | May 22, 2012
Nearly 27,000 city properties in March were in danger of going to tax sale, but ultimately about 10,600 had liens included in the auction Monday. Investors bought 6,545 of the lien certificates , which raised $20 million for the city, according to the Finance Department. It's not unusual for property owners to pay up in April, just before the annual spring tax sale. But one of the narrowest misses this year was a case in which the homeowner paid last month -- after she learned that the state had retroactively reduced a tax credit on her property -- and the city lost the check.
BUSINESS
By Jamie Smith Hopkins, The Baltimore Sun | May 21, 2012
Kristina Suson's home wasn't part of the city's tax sale Monday, but it was a close call. Baltimore places liens on properties for unpaid property taxes, water bills and other municipal debts, then puts the liens up for auction every spring — allowing investors to buy them and either collect or move to foreclose. The city auctioned liens on about 10,600 properties on Monday, finding buyers for 6,545 of them and raising $20 million. Suson ended up on this year's list, to her surprise, after the state retroactively reduced a property tax credit she'd received in 2009.
NEWS
By Fred Schulte, Center for Public Integrityand Scott Calvert, The Baltimore Sun | March 4, 2011
A Baltimore real estate attorney has admitted to conspiring with other local lawyers to rig the bids for millions of dollars' worth of government tax auctions in Maryland, newly unsealed court records show. Attorney John Reiff stated under oath that he and two law partners helped fix bids for the purchase of "large numbers" of property tax debts, or tax liens, sold by tax assessors at auctions in Baltimore and several Maryland counties from 2003 to 2007, according to court filings made public last month.