Tuesday, June 29, 2010

House Votes 409 to 5 to encourage tax fraud

The homebuyer tax credit has always been bad policy, but voting to extend the closing deadline is horrible. 409 - 5! Unbelievable. Those homebuyers who signed contracts before April 30, had a minimum of 60 days to close, and have known it from the beginning.

Nancy Pelosi says (emphasis added).
Up to 180,000 homebuyers will now receive the tax credit they deserve

Reuters also notes.
Critics say the three-month extension is an invitation for fraud, providing prospective home buyers time to back date contracts to a date before April 30 and subsequently closing on those contracts by the new September 30 deadline.

Count me among the critics. The credit has always been bad policy, but this just makes it worse.

2 comments:

  1. Let me get this straight - Congress won't extend unemployment benefits, or prevent thousands of teachers from getting laid off (both of which would stimulate the economy and ease the pain of the recession), but they will give more free money to people who are relatively unimpacted by the recession so they can buy cheaper homes at our expense. Nice to see they've got their priorities.

    Mike

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  2. Mike, yes that's it.

    It is the margin of the vote that I find most depressing.

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