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Jan. 28 IRS auction set for tax-protesting ex-lawmaker’s home

FILE – Then-Idaho state Rep. Phil Hart chats with other attendees while waiting for a speech by presidential candidate Ron Paul at the Spokane Convention Center on Feb. 21, 2012. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)
By Betsy Z. Russell betsyr@spokesman.com(208) 336-2854
FILE – Then-Idaho state Rep. Phil Hart chats with other attendees while waiting for a speech by presidential candidate Ron Paul at the Spokane Convention Center on Feb. 21, 2012. (Jesse Tinsley / The Spokesman-Review)

The IRS has set a new date to auction off the home of tax-protesting former Idaho state Rep. Phil Hart to offset his federal income tax debts.

The agency, on its auctions website, described the property as a “Great Log Home” that “Needs some TLC!”

The auction will take place at 11 a.m. Jan. 28 at 501 Government Way in Coeur d’Alene, with bidder registration starting at 10 a.m. Like the last auction, the minimum bid price is set at $110,000.

Hart was the successful bidder for the home at an Oct. 1 IRS auction with a bid of $202,740, but after putting up the required 10 percent deposit, he failed to pay the balance in time and the sale fell through. His forfeited deposit was applied toward his $586,000-plus federal tax debt.

Hart stopped filing federal and state income tax returns in 1996 while he unsuccessfully pressed a lawsuit challenging the federal income tax as unconstitutional. After the case was rejected, he began filing returns again, but authorities said he never fully paid up. He also has been fighting an order to pay more than $53,000 in back state income taxes.

Hart settled his federal tax case in January and agreed to allow the auction of his home. When the IRS first went after the home, Hart claimed he didn’t own it, though he built it and lived there. Federal authorities, in court filings, called Hart’s attempted transfer of the home to a trust in his daughter’s name a “fraudulent transaction.”

It’s the same home that Hart built with trees illegally cut from state school endowment land in 1996, maintaining that as a citizen he had a right to take the logs without charge. After repeated, unsuccessful appeals, he never fully satisfied a $22,827 court judgment over the timber theft.

Hart, a Republican who represented Athol, was defeated in his bid for a fifth term in the Idaho House in the 2012 GOP primary, but he’s remained active in state GOP politics.