Update today from Steve:
For those of you that have been following this absurd saga, I will briefly recap and then continue where I left off from the earlier thread.
In November and December I was able to generate a lot of negative press about Maine’s aggressive and unfair policy of taxing out of state pilots for simply flying into the State. The publicity included AeroNet News, AvWeb, AOPA and a widely distributed article by the Associated Press. Furthermore, the Portland Herald published an editorial a couple of weeks ago also reinforcing our position that the State’s use tax policy on non-resident pilots was inappropriate, and misguided.
The publicity was sufficient to mobilize Maine Revenue Services (MRS) to generate their own counter press releases and to publicly disclose (for the first time) their policy on taxing out of state aircraft. In late December, I was issued a final decision letter that my appeal had been formally denied and that I must pay up within 30 days or file in Superior Court (my deadline was Jan 25th, 2008).
In mid January, I met with Jack Cashman, the Sr. Economic and Political Advisor to the Governor. It was a good meeting and he actually listened to what I had to say and appeared interested to help. He agreed that what the state was doing was not fair, not smart economically and definitely a public relations disaster. So, after that, I was actually quite hopeful that the Governor would step in and force Maine Revenue Services to withdraw the letters for me and the other affected pilots. Last week, the AOPA also had a meeting with Cashman and a number of other state politicians reinforcing the message.
The deadline we imposed was yesterday – As a result, a summit meeting was convened that included Governor Baldacci, Jack Cashman, other cabinet members, Maine Revenue Services, the Attorney General’s Office, etc. From second hand conversations after the meeting this is what I learned: The meeting was quite contentious with MRS arguing that there are many people that don’t agree with their tax assessments and if the Governor steps in this time, he will be setting a terrible precedent. In the future, anyone who is not happy will think they can just go to the Governor and he will overrule his own taxing department. They argued that there is already a system in place for people who don’t agree with their assessments -- the Maine Superior/Supreme Court. The argument was also made that if the Governor helped us, it would become publicly known that the Governor intervened and there would be a backlash from people saying -- the Governor is willing to take care of rich people with airplanes, but not the rest of us – who also need tax relief.
So Governor Baldacci blinked first and caved in to Maine Revenue Services. Today we filed a petition in Superior Court and the litigation has begun. Now that we are in litigation I am prohibited from talking with anyone inside Maine government. Fortunately, the AOPA has become actively involved over the last couple of months. In fact, they have agreed to cover my initial litigation expenses. Their commitment and response has been really important and helpful at a critical time.
Steve Kahn N543DM SR-22 #363
