Chafee Benefits from Tax Breaks on RI Properties
Monday, November 01, 2010
This complex web of ownership brings a series of financial and political benefits to the Chafees. Their motor vehicle registrations at the couple’s Exeter farm allow them to benefit from a lower car tax rate. Their homestead exemption in Providence cuts the property taxes on his 54 Barnes Street home by as much as half and Chafee's residency in Warwick has allowed him to mount his campaign for governor from a political base of support. (Click here to view the documents.)
“I don’t think it’s appropriate. I think you have to pay taxes in the town you live in, where you are registered to vote, because that’s your primary residence,” said Marie Sorman, president of Operation Clean Government. “There just seems to be something wrong with someone with that much wealth doing everything they can to dodge taxes while the rest of us are struggling.”
Public officials avoiding car taxes
Chafee motor vehicles registered in Exeter
The Chafees have a somewhat different situation. In 2009, Chafee and his wife had 11 motor vehicles registered in Exeter, where they have a 916.8-acre farm worth $1.6 million according to Exeter town assessment records.
Amongst the cars registered in Exeter are a 1997 Audi and three Toyota Priuses. The Chafees do not currently have any cars registered in Providence and Lincoln Chafee has a trailer with an assessed value of $500 registered at his 22 Beachwood Drive home in Warwick. Each of these numbers is according to the respective assessor’s departments in those communities. The current car tax rate in Exeter is $32.59 per $1,000 in value, compared to $76.78 in Providence and $34.60 in Warwick.
Thanks to the lower tax rate, the Chafees—who had a last reported net worth of as much as $47.8 million—were billed $2,786.46 in car taxes to Exeter in 2009, compared to as much as $6,564.69 in Providence, a savings of just under $4,000. For most taxpayers, motor vehicles are registered at a person’s primary residence, but an exclusion in state law allows individuals to register motor vehicles at a separate location if they are “customarily kept there.”
The Chafees also have a homestead exemption on their 54 Barnes Street home in Providence, according to the city assessor’s department. The exemption is up to 50 percent of the property value, according to the city ordinance in effect before July 28, 2010. (The property is listed as having two owners, according to city assessment data: the Barnes Street Trust I and II and Andrew W. Davis, who is a trustee. Lincoln Chafee and his wife are the beneficiaries of the trust and Davis is their attorney, according to Chafee’s filing with the state Ethics Commission.)
Declares residency in Warwick
Now, Chafee is claiming a third community as his residence. When he filed his declaration of candidacy form with the Rhode Island Board of Elections on June 28, 2010, Chafee listed his 22 Beachwood Drive home in Warwick as his residence. By claiming Warwick as his residence, Chafee was able to claim as his base of support a city where he was mayor throughout much of 1990s.
Chafee Campaign Manager Mike Trainor declined to comment.
Related Articles
- Chafee Outraged Over Caprio ‘Abuse of Power’
- Chafee Guilty of ‘Cronyism’?
- Chafee: Caprio Never Met a Tax He Didn’t Like
- Chafee: More Unpaid Taxes?