It's very interesting to read the differing contributions to this thread. There is the opinion that the Sentinel and its employees have a vendetta against The Villages, and will go to any length to sell newspapers, even to the point of dissing the Morse family. They have tasked their evil columnist to study the IRS report and share her biased opinion (wow, isn’t that a novel concept, a newspaper employing a columnist who writes biased opinions – and by the way, what other kinds of opinions are there?). On the other end of the spectrum are people (TV wannabes like me) who have never really fully understood the financial foundation of The Villages, and are now learning that maybe there could be a problem in paradise – and maybe they should be extra careful before spending their hard-earned retirement nest egg in support of Mr. Morse’s possible tax problem with the IRS. And then there are those in the middle who have already purchased property in TV, who need as much information as they can get so they can sleep at night. It seems to me that the people in the first category would like this all to just go away with the wave of a magic wand, and blame it all on the Sentinel, especially their biased columnist. In other words, shoot the messenger.
What does Lauren Ritchie know anyway? Well I’ll tell you what she knows – which I now know too, as I’ve now read the IRS report (caveat – the parts of the report that put me to sleep were only skimmed). There is an unanswered IRS report that concludes that Mr. Morse booked a $53 Million gain on sales in his corporation’s 2003 tax return, which was the direct result of selling property to the Villages Community Development District, who in turn issued tax exempt bonds. And the IRS now says that the gain did not meet the legal requirements for a tax exempt bond issue, which casts doubt on all of the Community Development District’s previous tax exempt bond issues. You should know all that too, but you probably wouldn’t have known if the biased Sentinel columnist hadn’t brought it up. Admittedly, the IRS can be wrong, and have been proven wrong many times in the past; that’s why there is a federal tax court. I sincerely hope they are wrong in this case too, but I am impressed with the detail and logic in the IRS Report, and will be equally interested in reading the Community Development District’s response, which according to the IRS Report, would have been due on February 22.
“Sentinel” - a person employed to keep watch for some anticipated event.
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