Palm Beach Post, Madoffs Get $13,800 Property Tax Rebate:
Palm Beach County wrote the couple a $13,800 check — a rebate, handing back taxes the Madoffs paid on their Palm Beach mansion.
The county had little choice, experts say: The Madoffs' property had been overvalued, so they'd paid too much in taxes and legally were owed the money.
Now, Ruth Madoff wants the check recut, with her husband's name removed — despite a deal with prosecutors in which she promised to give up all but $2.5 million of her fortune.
The deal, relinquishing the rest of her money to the government so it can be redistributed to victims, explicitly mentions tax refunds. It was signed at the end of June, after the county refund was issued. …
Ruth Madoff recently sent the uncashed refund check back to Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon, with a letter dated Aug. 23 asking that it be reissued in her name alone.
When asked for his opinion on the letter, Richard Rampell, an expert on Florida tax law, had only one guess for why she might have written it. "She wants to have unfettered access to the money, clearly," said Rampell, a managing partner of Palm Beach's Rampell & Rampell. With the check also in her husband's name, Ruth Madoff would need his signature to deposit it into anything except a joint bank account, Rampell said — difficult, with Bernie Madoff in prison and his accounts impounded. …
The rebate's roots stretch to last September, when an attorney for Ruth Madoff challenged the 2008 value that the county had placed on her waterfront mansion on North Lake Way. When a county appraiser examined the case, he agreed, said John Thomas of the Palm Beach County Property Appraiser's office. Her house was on a smaller plot of land than the surrounding homes, which the assessment did not consider, he said.
On Dec. 1, the appraiser agreed to drop his 2008 assessment of the five-bedroom, seven-bathroom house's worth from $9.4 million to $8.5 million, chopping about 9 percent off her $151,000 tax bill, Thomas said. In return, Madoff's attorney dropped the appeal.
