[Chat] BSFS wins tax case!!!

[Emil Volcheck]

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society won a significant tax
case today in Maryland's highest court.  This decision will
make it easier for other educational organizations to gain
an exemption from property tax because it sets precedent
throughout the state.

It's worth noting that Tax Court granted BSFS an exemption
because it is a literary society, one of the categories
of educational organizations entitled to tax-exempt status.
The Circuit Court overruled the Tax Court because according
to the judge who handled that case, science fiction is
not literature, and therefore BSFS could not be a literary
society.

--Emil

---
BSFS Wins Tax Case:

        On December 15, 2004 the Maryland Court of Appeals in a
unanimous opinion reversed the judgment of the Circuit Court of
Baltimore and restored the earlier findings of the Maryland Tax Court
granting the Baltimore Science Fiction Society a property tax exemption
for our building at 3310 E. Baltimore Street. In the 13-page opinion the
Court of Appeals reviews many aspects of the tax court's finding and in
some instances provides a more favorable opinion about the BSFS case
than the Tax Court. According to BSFS attorney Donald J. Arnold esq.
this constitutes a "clear, clean win."  There is still work for our
legal team to perform before BSFS receives a refund and given the speed
of the legal system and State Department of Assessment and Taxation it
will be months before a tax refund is delivered.   However, this opinion
leaves no doubt that we have won and through our efforts have helped
establish more reasonable rules for all non-profit educational
organizations in Maryland. Or to use the words from the opinion, "a more
realistic concept" of educational. I find it a measure of poetic justice
that a Science Fiction Society through determination could force a state
government to adopt more realistic rules.

-- 
Emil Volcheck
volcheck at acm.org
http://acm.org/~volcheck