California's Matsui pays back taxes to D.C.-area home
By Rob Hotakainen | McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Sacramento Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui has paid her back property taxes for her home in Maryland and is current on her obligations, her chief of staff said Tuesday.
Tax officials in Montgomery County, Maryland, sent Matsui a bill for $12,758.96. That included a total of $4,317.96 in back taxes -- $2,548.97 for 2007 and $1,768.99 for 2006. And it also included the balance of her 2009 tax bill, which is $8,441.
While the county's web site still lists those bills as unpaid, Julie Eddy, Matsui's chief of staff, said they've been paid.
"One, she has paid the two previous bills and, two, she has already paid this year's bill prior to it being due," Eddy said in an e-mail.
Earlier, Matsui had repaid $2,800 in back taxes on her $1.5 million home in Montgomery County after state officials said she received tax breaks for erroneously claiming it was her permanent residence.
She had been awaiting a bill for back taxes for the earlier years, when similar mistakes were made in computing what she owed.
Matsui mistakenly received a homestead tax benefit after claiming that the Maryland property was her principal residence. The U.S. Constitution requires a member of Congress to be an inhabitant of the state from which they are elected. Earlier this year, Matsui asked to withdraw her application for the tax breaks, which prompted the latest bill.
"As soon as I found out there was a concern, I took action and contacted the state, asking them to not give me a tax credit this year or ever again," Matsui said in a statement earlier this month.
Matsui, who is completing her second term as California's 5th District House member, lives in suburban Chevy Chase, Md., just across the Washington, D.C., line. She and her late husband Robert, who represented the district until his death four years ago, bought the house in 1979 for $250,000
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