Alsobrooks promises to pay back property taxes on Maryland, D.C. homes

U.S. Senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks is pledging to pay the government back for tax breaks she incorrectly received on two properties she owned.

Alsobrooks received a Homestead Property Tax Credit on a Prince George’s County townhome and a homestead tax credit and a senior tax credit on a Washington, D.C., home that she shouldn’t have, her campaign acknowledged following a CNN report over the weekend.

Alsobrooks’ attorney has written letters to both jurisdictions pledging to pay back any taxes that should have been collected.

Her lawyer deemed the matter an “inadvertent error” that she aims to rectify.

Alsobrooks, a Democrat, is currently the Prince George’s County executive and is running against Republican former Gov. Larry Hogan to represent Maryland in the U.S. Senate.

In Prince George’s County, Alsobrooks has owned a townhome in Upper Marlboro since 2005. When she bought a new home in 2015, she kept the townhome and rented it out — but continued to receive the homestead credit, which is only allowed for a person’s primary residence.

Alsobrooks has not received the homestead credit on her current home where she lives.

Connor Lounsbury, a senior advisor to Alsobrooks, noted that the error actually did not benefit Alsobrooks.

“In fact, she ended up paying more in taxes than she would have, had the credit transferred over,” Lounsbury said in a statement. “Nevertheless, Angela is working to repay any credits received on the old property.”

In Washington, D.C., Alsobrooks took over financial responsibility for her grandmother’s home, and it was transferred to her name in 2005. Alsobrooks was unaware that a homestead credit and a senior tax credit also were attached to the property, her lawyer wrote. The property was sold in 2018.

In both cases, Alsobrooks is pledging to pay the difference in what taxes were paid and what should have been owed, her lawyer wrote.

Maryland’s homestead credit is intended to blunt the effect that rising property values have on property tax payments. Homeowners who receive the credit only pay a fraction of increasing taxes on their primary home when property values rise.

But homeowners often make errors, with The Baltimore Sun reporting back in 2011 that hundreds of Marylanders received homestead credits on multiple properties or for properties where they no longer resided. Some prominent Marylanders have unwittingly received the homestead tax break when they should not have.

Now-Gov. Wes Moore was one property owner who made that error, The Baltimore Sun found in 2013. Moore and his wife Dawn Flythe Moore had owned and lived in a rowhouse in Baltimore’s Riverside neighborhood from 2006-2008, but continued receiving the homestead tax break after moving out, the newspaper reported. The Moores said they did not know they were getting the credit and immediately took steps to pay the city, the newspaper reported at the time.

In 2012, Maryland lawmakers passed a law allowing for a 25% penalty, on top of back taxes, on property owners who are found to have “willfully misrepresented facts” to qualify for the homestead credit.