American Indian land sold off by IRS to pay off taxes

[cali]

US tax officials have sold off thousands of acres of an impoverished Indian reservation in what the tribe claims is a "shameful" and unprecedented breach of laws protecting Native Americans.


By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 6:54PM GMT 04 Dec 2009

The 7,112 acres - or 11 square miles - of Crow Creek Sioux ancestral land in central South Dakota was auctioned off on Thursday by the US Internal Revenue Service to help pay off more than $3.1 million (£1.9 million) in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest.

The land, part of the tribe's original reservation established in an 1868 treaty, was originally held by the federal government in a trust for the tribe.

However, it was later divided up between individual tribal members, some of whom sold it to non-Indians, putting it outside the tribe's legal jurisdiction.

The tribe bought it back in 1998 but claims the US Bureau of Indian Affairs failed to put the land back into trust, which would have protected it.

The bleak, flat reservation land is particularly valuable to the tribe, one of the poorest communities in the US, because it has been designated as suitable for the development of wind power.

<snip>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6729231/American-Indian-land-sold-off-by-IRS-to-pay-off-taxes.html

[havocmom]

1. Hmmm, gonna have to look for the geologic data on the land involved

[DrDan]

2. what will happen when the U.S. gov is upside-down - the deficit

overwhelms the value of the land and assets of the 50 states.

I wonder if we can walk away and stick China with it

[Jamastiene]

3. That's sad and just plain wrong. n/t

[Enthusiast]

4. President Obama could step in

and put a stop to this. This is utter bullshit.

[eShirl]

5. "the tax bill could have been paid from trust money held for the tribe."

Someone has been negligent, and it is not the tribe!

:grr:

[Fumesucker]

6. Just wait until the IRS starts taking property for not buying private insurance..

When it happens to those who are so blithely supporting mandated private insurance they are going to be whining big time and I'm going to tell them to STFU, they were warned.

[imdjh]

7. Something is wrong with this article.

The article doesn't explain why the IRS sold off the land.
Even if the land was the only available asset for the tax debt, the tribe would have known that the land had been seized so they could have paid the bill then, out of their trust fund if it's legal to do that.

So something is up here, and the journalist wants to make it evil IRS hurts innocent (and infantilized) Indian.

The article says that taxes were owed on business activity.

[Igel]

9. Agreed.

It's hard to know.

I mean, on the face of it the tribe seems to say they were told they'd owe no taxes on some business venture--one that presumably turned a profit. On the other hand, my ignorance of the tax laws would surely not protect me in a dust-up with the IRS.

At the same time, the land wasn't part of the trust. Therefore it could easily be dealt with. I have to assume that using trust fund monies would be somehow more complicated. Why wasn't the land part of the trust? Who was responsible for making sure it was put there--the BIA or the tribe? Or both?

The impression you get is that while the business venture was profitable, the Native Americans surely can't be expected to know US tax laws or monitor their own possessions and must be protected. That's shameful.

[hankthecrank]

8. wrong wrong wrong this smells