Scott Taylor Hit with $45K Federal Tax Lien Last Year
By Chad Smith, American Ledger
Last year, Rep. Scott Taylor, R-Va., faced a previously unreported federal tax lien of more than $45,000, another example of the congressman’s recent financial trouble, including late penalties for not paying thousands of dollars in state property taxes this summer.
The lien — for $45,353.51 — was issued in September 2017, and Taylor paid it off on Nov. 8, 2017, according to federal tax records. It wasn’t clear what the lien was for.
An email sent to Taylor’s campaign seeking comment wasn’t answered by the time of publication.
The lien was addressed to Taylor at 1206 Laskin Road, the business address for two companies he owned, Courthouse Fitness and Assurance Properties, according to state business records and Taylor’s financial disclosures.
While it wasn’t clear if the lien was related to his fitness business, it had run into financial trouble in the past.
In 2012, Taylor’s landlord sued him for failing to pay rent for a previous entity, Neptune Fitness, resulting in a $147,272 judgment against him.
His attorneys argued at the time that the judgment was unenforceable since Taylor sold the gym’s assets to Courthouse Fitness, which he also owned, the Virginian-Pilot reported in 2013.
In 2011, Taylor’s house in Virginia Beach was foreclosed on, and in 2013, there was a separate $828,255 judgment against for failure to repay a loan, according to the Virginian-Pilot report.
Taylor told the newspaper that he lost too much money when the real estate market crashed in 2008, forcing him out of the house.
This year, Assurance Properties, Taylor’s other business, was delinquent in paying $11,842 in property taxes, the Virginian-Pilot reported in June. (The delinquency was first flagged for the newspaper by American Bridge 21st Century, the American Ledger’s parent organization.)
Scott Weldon, a spokesman for Taylor, told the newspaper that the congressman “got busy with everything going on” and paying the taxes “slipped his mind.”
“I think he just got caught up with everything in Washington. All the traveling and the primary and everything. It was just a lapse,” Weldon said. “That’s what he said to me.”