Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic nominee for Maryland's open Senate seat, missed the Oct. 31 deadline to pay her fair share of taxes on her former Washington, D.C., rental property, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Washington, D.C., authorities issued Alsobrooks a $47,580 bill in late September for taxes she should have paid on her former rental property dating back to 2004 had she not improperly claimed tax exemptions on the home meant only for senior citizens and primary residents of the district. The bill was due by the end of the day Thursday, but the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue told the Free Beacon that Alsobrooks still owes nearly $30,000 of her fair share as of Friday morning.
"Our record indicates that a payment of $17,646.54 has been made. As of November 1, there is an outstanding balance of $29,934.02," said D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue spokeswoman Brianna Jordan, adding that interest on Alsobrooks’s bill will continue to accumulate so long as it remains unpaid.
Paying the remaining balance may be easier said than done for Alsobrooks, according to the embattled Democrat’s financial disclosure filed in August. Though Alsobrooks raked in a cozy $222,000 salary in 2023 for her service as county executive of Prince George’s County, she may lack the liquid assets necessary to pay her remaining taxes. Much of her net worth is tied up in her Upper Marlboro, Maryland, rental property, as well as her state-sponsored pension plan. In late August, before authorities slapped her with the $47,580 tax bill, Alsobrooks disclosed she holds anywhere between $16,000 and $65,000 across her checking and savings accounts.
The Alsobrooks campaign did not return a request for comment.
A spokeswoman for Alsobrooks’s Republican opponent, former Gov. Larry Hogan, said in a statement that Alsobrooks’s tax delinquency shows the Maryland Democrat "believes there’s one set of rules for herself and another for everyone else."
"It’s the same basic disregard for accountability we’ve seen time and again," Hogan spokeswoman Blake Kernen told the Free Beacon. "Hardworking Marylanders follow the law and meet their responsibilities every day; they deserve leaders who do the same. If Angela Alsobrooks refuses to follow the rules now, Marylanders can’t trust her to keep her word and represent their interests in Washington."
Alsobrooks’s tax delinquency opens her up to additional charges of hypocrisy in the waning hours of her campaign. Alsobrooks has pledged throughout her campaign that, if elected to the Senate, she will crack down on tax handouts for wealthy Americans. That would include Alsobrooks, whose salary puts her above the 95th percentile of individual income earners in America.
But Alsobrooks is now paying a hefty price for bending the rules to skirt on her own taxes. She received her grandmother’s former Washington, D.C., home in November 2003 when the senior became too old to live alone, and rented it out for her personal profit until she sold it in 2018. Throughout those years, Alsobrooks improperly claimed tax exemptions only meant for seniors and primary residents of the district. Alsobrooks, 53, is neither—she’s been a registered voter in Prince George’s County since 2000.
Alsobrooks’s efforts to dodge her fair share of taxes on the property didn’t end with her improper tax deductions. She says she obtained the home from her grandmother, but Washington, D.C., real estate records obtained by the Free Beacon show Alsobrooks actually obtained it from her mother, who just minutes prior had had received the property from Alsobrooks's grandmother.
The curious paperwork maneuver appears to have saved Alsobrooks from roughly $4,000 in property transfer taxes, real estate attorney Randy Weiss told the Free Beacon. Property transfers from grandparent to grandchild in the district were not exempt from transfer taxes until 2005, well over a year after Alsobrooks obtained the property. But transfers from parent to child were. By using her mother as an intermediary, the Maryland Democrat appears to have sidestepped the district’s 2.2 percent transfer and recordation taxes.
For 10 of the 15 years she had the property on the rental market, Alsobrooks failed to maintain a rental license in the district, an alleged violation that, according to WJLA, could result in additional fines upward of $16,000.