In November, the Montgomery County Civic Federation is proud to recognize Louis Wilen of Olney as our Community Hero.
Louis is a member of the Cherrywood Homeowners Association Board of Directors and a delegate to the Greater Olney Civic Association. He has served as a member of the MCCF Executive Committee and Chair of its Public Utilities Committee.
We honor Louis Wilen for his tireless advocacy on behalf of the citizens of Montgomery County where he has lived since 1994. A career software developer and technical support specialist for IBM Corporation, Louis has taken special interest in examining complicated public policy issues and identifying the underlying problems that require solutions by elected officials and public sector experts.
One of Louis' more recent analyses revealed that the State of Maryland has been improperly removing millions of dollars (in the aggregate) of property tax credits from homeowners. According to an October 2020 state government audit, Maryland has been miscalculating a tax credit for homeowners for years. Last year alone, just in Montgomery County, the error led to thousands of taxpayers losing significant amounts of money. Auditors found Homeowner Tax Credits (HTC) awarded to 5,388 applicants were improperly reduced by $4.4 million, and that’s just in Montgomery County, for fiscal year 2019. The error dates back to at least 2005, according to the report. The State does not plan to return the money.
Wilen's analysis revealed that the Maryland State Department of Assessment and Taxation (SDAT) has wrongly been deducting other tax credits from the HTC, which benefits low and moderate income families, seniors and people who may have lost their jobs, thereby improperly increasing their tax bills.
His longstanding and continuing efforts to get State and County officials to address the issue were ignored and dismissed for over three years. Finally, however, after contacting the Maryland State Office of Legislative Audits, the state performed its own audit of SDAT which confirmed the scale of the miscalculations and overcharges to residents.
His work also caught the attention of Montgomery County State Delegate Al Carr. Carr plans to introduce legislation in the upcoming Annapolis session that will require the state to pay back a portion of the improperly removed credits.
This is not the first time that Louis has received recognition for his community service. In 2007, Louis received the President's Award from the Greater Olney Civic Association for his work in spurring passage of the Homestead Credit Verification Act of 2007. In 2020, the Civic Federation is proud to recognize Louis Wilen again for his service and advocacy and to honor him as our Community Hero.
Click here to see Fox5’s coverage of this issue.. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/maryland-shortchanges-taxpayers-millions-of-dollars-according-to-state-audit
"The error dates back to at least 2005, according to the report. The State does not plan to return the money."
ReplyDeleteWhereas if individuals had to return money and didn't they would be faced with compound interest, fines and penalties.