Sunday, May 20, 2018

Cathy Myers - Tax Cheat

Early in her campaign, Cathy Myers had to float a loan of $30,000 to herself to keep her campaign's finances above water.  When this was revealed in her campaign finance report, I, among many others, thought it must be nice to have that much money laying around to squander it like that.

But now we have learned how she could afford to do it.

She is a tax cheat.

Myers is constantly pointing out that she is a teacher, something that she should be proud of.  But what she doesn't tell people is that she is a teacher in Illinois, where she used to live and still owned a house for a few years after moving to Wisconsin.

And it is that house in Illinois that has people raising their eyebrows in alarm.  Even though she no longer lived there - or in the state - she was taking a $6,000 a year tax deduction on it, apparently illegally (emphasis mine):
Myers, a Janesville School Board member, moved to Wisconsin by 2009 and began voting here in the spring election that year. She contributed to the state Democratic Party two years later, listing Janesville as her home.

An owner-occupied exemption, also known as a general homestead exemption, is meant for someone who owns and occupies a property as a primary residence as of Jan. 1 of the tax year in question, according to the website for the Rockford Township Illinois Office of the Assessor.

Property taxes are a major source of funding for schools, municipal and county governments, technical colleges and sewerage districts.

Thomas J. Walsh, supervisor of assessments for Winnebago County, Ill., said his review of the records confirmed that Myers took the tax break from 2009 to 2012.

Property owners can receive the exemption if they submit a valid lease agreement with a renter at the beginning of each tax year. He said Myers did not do this in 2011 or 2012. Records for previous years, he said, have been disposed of.
Myers is saying she filed her taxes based on the advice of an unnamed tax attorney. Somehow, I sincerely doubt that said attorney, if there was indeed one, had told her that she did not need to file the required forms in order to take this generous tax break.

One of the things that really stands out is the fact that these taxes she cheated on would have gone to pay for the things she holds near and dear to her heart, like schools and teachers' salaries.

But what makes this whole affair especially appalling is that Myers had the audacity to constantly attack Randy "IronStache" Bryce by poor-shaming him due to money troubles he had when his medical bills pushed him into bankruptcy.  The thing is, even though he did have money problems, like so many of us have had at one time or another, he kept his word and made good on his debts.

That's more than Myers can say.

No comments:

Post a Comment