This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 10th, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

A case now coming before the US Supreme Court challenges some state's practice of stealing wholesale homes from

residents and all equity therein for often substantially smaller tax

underpayments. Cato's Tommy Berry details the arguments in the case of

Tyler v Hennepin County. We spoke this week. This case is about local governments

that have been empowered to seize home equity from Americans with what

appears to be very little due process whatsoever.

In many cases, the town gets this massive windfall of cash.

And it's very much out of step with what we understand to be paying taxes.

Like you don't get an extra $20,000 or governments shouldn't get an extra $20,000, or governments shouldn't get an extra $20,000 just by virtue of the fact that somebody

has underpaid their taxes by some, you know, small or trivial amount. You tell me about this case.

So this case is about a woman named Geraldine Tyler. She had purchased a home in

the northern Minneapolis area. A few decades ago, she

gradually decided she wasn't feeling very safe in that home, decided to move

away. For reasons that aren't entirely clear she stopped paying her property taxes on that home and

after a little while the county simply seized it to

essentially pay off the taxes she had not paid. So by the time they seized it,

her unpaid taxes were about $2,000 or so, fines and interest had racked it up to

about 15,000 bill total, but when they sold off this condo,

they got, the county got $40,000 for it.

So 25,000 more than was needed to cover her bill, but they did not return that $25,000 to her.

...