Friday, July 3, 2015

Cell tower owners continue to ignore tax bills; county does nothing to collect

Property tax bills for 2015 became available online on July 1.   You can view yours here.

Owners of homes and commercial properties that don't pay their property tax lose the property to an investor who pays the taxes in exchange for receiving a lien on the property.  The tax lien process is explained here.  It takes about a year for the owner to actually lose the property, but it's a virtual certainty that if you don't pay your property taxes, you will lose your home within a year of when the taxes were due.

But for owners of cell towers located on public school property in Montgomery County, paying taxes has been optional for many years.  When a cell tower company doesn't pay the taxes on their cell site, the county takes no action to collect the overdue debt.

Montgomery County is supposed to sell a lien on the tower and cell site equipment, and the lien holder would then be able to foreclose on the cell site equipment.  But for reasons that county officials won't discuss, tax liens are not sold for cell sites on public school property in Montgomery County.

Clear Wireless hasn't paid their tax bills from 2010, 2011, 2012 or 2014.  Will they pay their 2015 tax bill?  It doesn't appear likely.

Try disregarding your property tax bill this year and let us know what happens!

While you're at it, try disregarding your cell phone bill for a few months and let us know how long it takes for your cell phone service to be shut down.

Overdue Property Tax bills for Clear Wireless site at Wheaton High School
 

7 comments:

  1. Embedded loophole?

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    Replies
    1. Nope. Just refusing to pay. Try it and see how it works fro you.

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    2. Oh, but first make a big campaign contribution to certain elected officials! Don't forget that step!

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    3. In MoCo we are all equal, but some are more equal than others.

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  2. Another problem is the number of towers that have not been taxed at all! Hiding in plain sight.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Someone should attempt to pay the taxes on the towers so they can get Liens out against them

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the best kind of work this site does.

    ReplyDelete

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