‘The facts should shock the country’: Government auctions home over taxes that were not due

A family’s home in Isabella County, Michigan, was confiscated by officials there and auctioned off.

All for a tax bill that was not due.

And now the Supreme Court is being asked to step in.

It’s all according to Pacific Legal Foundation, which explained it is at the high court again over the issue of the confiscation of private property without any compensation.

“We’ve joined as co-counsel in the case Pung v. Isabella County, which will be argued at the court this term,” the legal team explained.

“The facts of the case should shock the country. What happened to the Pung family could happen to anyone. The family did nothing wrong. They paid their property taxes on their three-bedroom suburban home in Union Township, Michigan, where Scott Pung lived with his wife and two kids.”

Then the county seized it and auctioned it off “for a fraction of its worth.”

It’s because the county was trying to collect a $1,600 school tax even though the family was exempt from that obligation.

“Here’s what happened: In 1994, Scott Pung applied for and received an exemption to a small supplemental school tax. Tragically, Scott died in 2004, leaving behind his wife and children. Several years later, the local tax assessor argued that Scott’s widow (who, by then, had also died unexpectedly) should have resubmitted paperwork for the school tax exemption. The tax assessor was wrong: State law says the exemption continues as long as family members continue to live in the home. Scott’s son still lived there. No further paperwork was necessary,” the PLF said.

However, there was another problem: “But being wrong doesn’t always deter government officials from exerting their power. Based on her misreading of the law, the tax assessor retroactively denied the exemption for several previous years,” the legal team noted.

“Mike Pung—Scott’s uncle and the administrator of the estate—objected. First, he tried to reason with the tax assessor. ‘I explained to her about the law,’ he told us. ‘It didn’t make any difference.’ He took the case to the Michigan Tax Tribunal, which ruled for the Pungs,” the PLF reported.

But even that didn’t mean anything.

Local tax assessor Patricia DePriest said, of the judge, “I don’t care what he says.”

Despite the court ruling, the county confiscated the property, sold the home valued at $200,000 for only $76,000, and kept it all.

The Pungs first action pointed out the Supreme Court has banned such windfall gains for governments, but even so, the county returned only about $73,000 of the home valued at $200,000.

“The Eighth Amendment also prohibits excessive fines, including destroying $118,000 in equity to collect $2,242 that was never owed in the first place. The penalty far outweighs any alleged wrongdoing,” the PFL said.

The damages, of course, were brought on by a tax bill that the family didn’t owe.

“What happened to the Pung family is exactly the kind of flagrant government abuse that Pacific Legal Foundation exists to fight (and defeat). An innocent family was victimized by people in power who ran roughshod over the rule of law,” the legal team reported.