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property tax or cap gains tax evasion?

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What is the name of your state? CA

I have a general property law question.
I have few clues but haven't the foggiest about how to piece them together:

Property Owner (PO) has many 65+ (owned in whole and in part) rental properties. PO and individual family members are each incorporated as separate entities. PO and family members transfer property to each other with the title search yielding as owner carrying the loan.

PO has made representations that property life is 27 years and upon some declaration (filing) property tax is not required on the property for the duration of that 27 years. PO has also represented to me has not paid property tax in 5 years.

What's fishy here? and of what significance is the 27 years.

So far, I have ascertained that:

Some assets identified within the property may qualify for accelerated depreciation. These assets are truly short-life property that the seller erroneously has depreciated or would depreciate for 27 years (for residential rental property). Depending on the municipality where the property is located, the short-life property may also be exempt from local property taxes.

PO and his buyers (AKA other family members) transfer property to each other and carry the loan:
1) as not to created a verifiable paper trail on the real value assessable by outside parties
2) to avoid taxes forever


NOw the question I have is:

is this truly a legal loophole or is it tax evasion?

Thanks very much
 


abezon

Senior Member
The sale & owner-carried contracts sound like prohibitted transactions and invalid installment sales agreements. If the various owners are filing installment sales forms, they are committing tax fraud.

Whether they get out of paying property taxes is between them & the county in which the property is located.

If you want, you can turn them in to the IRS & CA FTB. The IRS may even pay you a 10% reward if they collect anything. I don't know what CA pays, if anything.
 

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