City to audit Richmond tea party (Updated)
By Norman Leahy | Monday, November 28th, 2011 | Central Virginia, Politics, VirginiaInteresting. Recall that the Richmond tea party raised a stink when the Occupy Richmond folks were allowed to protest without having to pay the requisite fees and filings with the city of Richmond. The tea partiers decided to ask the city for their money back. What they got instead is an audit letter:
In response to the demand for a refund, the city has decided to target the Tea Party with a “comprehensive audit.”
According to the city, the Tea Party is delinquent in filing of Admissions, Lodging, and Meals Taxes with the city, despite never having charged for any of those things.
“We have never charged admission, or had lodging or meals associated with our rallies. Every month the forms are appropriately filled with zeros,” Owens said.
“Ms. Carr goes on to say that if we don’t respond within 15 days, the City will make a statutory assessment- meaning they’ll pick an amount to charge us,” she added.
In any other city, this could be fobbed off as retribution. As Richmond is still a southern city, we’ll just call it vengeance with a smile.
The audit letter can be read here.
Update
Here’s the Channel 6 report on this matter. It seems as though Jason was on to something (see the comments below). Richmond has a new computer program that rifled through the records and sent 700 such letters to various entities and individuals in the area dunning them for the proper paperwork and/or back taxes. That the tea party happened to be one of them is…wait for it…purely coincidental:
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About the author
Norm Leahy has written about Virginia and national politics online since 2002, beginning with One Man's Trash (OMT), and continuing through Bacon's Rebellion (both the blog and the e-zine), Sic Semper Tyrannis, NBC12's Decision Virginia, Richmond.com and Tertium Quids. He is the chief blogger at "The Score" and a producer of "The Score" radio show as well as being a Washington Post contributor.
Comments
11 Responses to "City to audit Richmond tea party (Updated)"
Occupy Richmond gets a pass after camping out and staying for days without permits … the Richmond Tea Party gets audited after properly applying for permits and paying fees. This is the type of hypocrisy that makes people so angry at the government.
This will not end well.
This is a gift. Invite the press to record every move.
Tada! What a surprise.. Its on Drudge. Who would thunk
I wonder if this is a case of a form letter going out to all businesses registered as a certain type. Not sure how the Richmond Tea Party is registered in the city, but if they fall under the same organizations that would typically need to file admissions tax information but haven’t done so (even if 0), the city just fires this off automatically without reading who it’s to.
Even if that’s the case, stupid move on the city’s part. Hopefully they clean this up soon.
I agree with Jason. Never attribute to malice that which can be readily explained by incompetence. And when it comes to the City of Richmond, incompetence is unbounded.
City of Richmond is managed by a bunch of diapers.. self absorbed and full of shit.
#auditrichmond
It’s the new movement taking Twitter by storm!
On Neil Cavuto at 6:20 and Greta at 10:30.
#auditrpv Did someone from rpv squeal to city officials in Richmond?
You think RPV asked for the Richmond Tea Party to be “occupied”? That’s a stretch…
Though the last time RPV was “audited” during Jeff Frederick’s tenure, there was certainly reason to do so….
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