This house is not a dwelling — it’s a boat, and may pay property taxes as such.
That’s in response to the owners of an unusually formed, 75-foot super-modern house boat anchored off Miami Beach’s Star Island. They are suing the county for hitting it with a $120,000 property tax invoice, claiming that their floating mansion is not a constructing — however a watercraft.
“We believe the sole reason our client is in this position — an unconstitutional tax assessment — is because of the shape and the style and the look of this boat,” lawyer Ivan Abrams, who represents the Arkup boat’s owners: the British businessman Jonathan Brown’s firm MacKnight International Inc., which purchased the vessel for $3.3 million final yr, told the Miami Herald. “If it were designed like any other yacht, we don’t think we’d be in this position.”
Taxing the solar-powered, rainwater-collecting and purifying system-equipped residence as a landlubbing tackle simply because it is a little completely different trying than its fellow yachts units a slippery slope of a tax precedent, added co-counsel Karen Lapekas. “Every boat sitting on Dinner Key right would be subject to property taxes,” mentioned Lapekas.
“If this boat is a floating structure, that means all the other yachts docked around Palm Island and Star Island that are not used every single day to go cruising are subject to taxation,” Abrams added.
Critics level out that the “Arkup barely meets seaworthiness requirements: it can travel up to five knots (5.75 mph) per hour, has a bow deck with controls for navigation, and has small 136 horsepower thrusters and an anchor system” Jalopnik assessed, figuring out “It honestly comes across as a loophole for rich people to live on the water and not pay property taxes.”
It is true, nonetheless, that in figuring out how a lot to cost the Arkup’s owners within the November 2021 tax invoice, which is now the topic of litigation, the property appraiser’s workplace did worth the Arkup by evaluating it to the worth of different yachts.
After being hit with the tax invoice, the proprietor employed a captain for the purported vessel and took three members of the property appraiser’s workplace — in addition to a county lawyer — for a two-hour tour of the Bay, the Herald reported.
