As I mentioned on November 2, 2005 and November 21, 2005, the Indiana Department of Revenue’s INDebt site is not available. Back then, I thought it was a minor oversight, skirting the law in the interest of implementing the tax amnesty legislation.
But now that the site has apparently been down for at least 6 months, it strikes me as a little more serious. The Indiana Dept. of Revenue is supposed to list tax warrants that are between two and ten years old since their first issuance, and the liability is more than $1,000. I believe the Department of Revenue is in violation of IC 6-8.1-3-16(j) which states:
The department shall publish the list compiled under this subsection on accessIndiana (as operated under IC 4-13.1-2) and make the list available for public inspection and copying under IC 5-14-3.
The last time I looked, I was interested in verifying whether a particular debtor was being truthful when he claimed he had huge tax liabilities to contend with. This time, I am investigating collectability of a particular debt. As part of its free information, Doxpop lists a bunch of tax warrant cases pending against the debtor but nothing about the amounts or the status of the case without paying for their service. Anyone know the deal about why INDebt is down or whether the list of tax cheats has been online any time during the past 6 months?
Maybe Richard Rhoad has a huge tax debt and keeping it under wraps is another “undisclosed detail” of the compensation package promised to him by Mitch Roob. Well, o.k., probably not. But with these guys, you just never know sometimes.
Doug,
I beleive you at one time said you do quite a bit of bankruptcy work. I wonder if you saw last nights 60 Minutes segment on Sallie Mae and the number college graduated swamped with student debt. To me the Republicans, especially Majority Whip’s John Boehner relationship with Sallie Mae is major scandal. With Boehner’s help and blessing Sallie Mae is going to raise the interest rate on Stafford Loans by 1.9%.
It is particularly perverse that the cutting of the Federal subsidy for student loans and raising interest rates is a boon to Sallie Mae because they make a fortune on distressed borrowers and collections.
Years ago I briefly worked for USA Funds out of Fisher’s and I could not believe how lame an organization it was. Yet folks who work their and bought Sallie Mae stock back in the mid-ninties have struck a gold mind all at college student and Middle Class America’s expense.
To me the enter Stafford load program could be replaced by direct student loans and all the payments made through payroll deductions based on the borrowers ablity to pay. All at the fraction of the current overhead.
My contact with bankruptcies come primarily through my collection work. Mostly I try to collect on medical bills in default. In that context, I don’t believe the new bankruptcy bill will do much of anything to get more money for creditors though it will make debtors’ lives quite a bit harder.
My experience is that it’s very rare to be anywhere near collecting a debt only to be foiled by bankruptcy. The folks who bankrupt on medical debts tend to be dry holes. Bankruptcy gives me and the front-line debt collectors I work with a nice clean excuse to close the file that doesn’t require much explanation to the collector’s supervisors.
Your mention of student loans made me recall something I’d read where the loans were guaranteed by the feds at some high rate even though the going rate was quite a bit lower so student loan originators could make quite a bit of money on the differential — or something like that. It’s been awhile and I can’t remember specifically what the game was.