Monday, December 20, 2004

Facade Easement Abuse (You Heard Me)

Something to ponder the next time you are driving through an historic district with homes you could never in your lifetime afford. (From the Des Moines Register -those Iowans with the mostest!)

Worried about "facade easement abuse"? Well, maybe not, but that's what Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, gets paid to fret about.

The Washington Post recently had a series of articles about this practice, in which wealthy owners of pricey historic structures - many in Washington - get to take advantage of the tax code and get their tax bills reduced. For a $1.5 million house, the tax benefit could total $165,000 or more.

Grassley loves to talk about this kind of stuff, snorting in a statement that it is "ridiculous for people in Georgetown to take tens of thousands of dollars in charitable tax deductions for agreeing not to put aluminum siding on their million-dollar brick houses, when local laws and regulations already prohibit such activity."

I can't believe stuff like this is still in the tax code, yet they won't bring back the tax incentives they used to have for rehabbing homes in troubled neighborhoods.

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