WASHINGTON – Three members of Congress, including a Washington state lawmaker, have been notified that they mistakenly received property tax credits on their Montgomery County, Md., homes, part of an inquiry into whether thousands of county residents benefited from flawed tax records.
Maryland officials sent letters to Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, last week, informing them that they no longer would receive homestead tax credits because their Montgomery homes are not their principal residences, officials said.
Larsen, who received $859.67 in credits over two years, said he had made it clear when he bought his house that his primary residence was in Washington state. “We’re now trying to figure out why the state of Maryland considers it a principal residence,” he said.
“If the state has determined we have to pay more, we’ll pay more for the public schools that my son goes to and the roads my wife drives on every day,” Larsen said.
The errors were discovered by information technology worker Louis Wilen. Wilen noticed about $400,000 in erroneous credits to 2,000 owners of rental properties miscoded as principal residences.
Although Inouye, Wyden and Larsen live in their houses for most of the tax year, Wilen found that they did not meet the other state criteria for principal residency: They do not vote, have a driver’s license nor file income taxes in Maryland.
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