[dwater]

A representative of this tax office said that the office does not turn a profit on these tax sales, it loses money. Which is believable because this woman was given 5 years to pay the $2300 bill or sign up for a repayment program. There are repayment programs that require a person to pay as little as 3% of their income per year. The county wasn't pushing her out the door to get their hands on her wealth, they tried repeatedly over multiple years to get her to make an effort and she never did anything.

What I would guess will happen is that the court will rule that keeping the excess equity is unconstitutional, but assessing fees equal to the cost of running the program is not, so they will raise the fees to compensate. Which will be good for some and bad for some, but feel more reasonable overall.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, so, if the tax office applied specific penalties for the delay, accounted for cost of sale, and deducted those specific costs, assessed with due process and challengable on their own merits, before refunding any excess value, that would be one thing.

But “we don’t profit in net from this practice so we should be free to keep arbitrary and unlimited excess proceeds from every individual subject regardless of the actual bill and reasonable costs in the specific case” is simply not a viable takings clause argument as I see it. And I think the Supreme Court majority is less favorable to the government on taking clause issues in general than I am...