Little Rock, Arkansas taxpayers are scratching their heads this week.
Per ‘de judge’ “Little Rock taxpayers that paid an illegal property tax before the filing of the suit that resulted in it being declared illegal, won’t receive a refund because those payments are considered voluntary”.
“No Shirley, I’m not making this stuff up. I’m not that creative.”
Circuit Judge Tim Fox, (hopefully not to be re-elected after this ruling), ruled that any payments made before the lawsuit, filed May 18, 2008, fall under a voluntary rule and won’t be refunded.”
“It falls under ‘Common Law’ County Attorney Karla Burnett said. “Taxes voluntarily paid are not refundable. Taxes paid before the lawsuit was filed are considered voluntary.”
OK now, let’s think about this for a minute. First you receive a tax bill from the County for x dollars. You pay the amount due on this tax bill by the statuary-time dead line that will prevent you from having a lien filed on your property by the County. You are now a voluntary taxpayer. That’s voluntary?
We should all wait for the Sheriff to show up and collect our taxes from us under threat of property seizure, then we are ‘non-voluntary’ and would be eligible for a refund if a future law suit determines that the tax we were billed is in fact an illegal tax.
I doubt that any of us are ‘voluntarily paying taxes’. I suspect that all taxes are paid because of the implicit threat behind the ‘if you don’t pay, then…’
I’m sorry, but not being a lawyer this ruling just seems intuitively stupid, far-fetched and ludicrous. But that is because I lack the legal understanding of stupid.
By the way, the pictures of the victorious politicians behind the illegal tax that won’t be refunded because we paid ‘voluntarily’, were all smiling. “Gothcha!”
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