EDITORIAL: Rangel’s Latest Cheat

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If Charlie Rangel owns it, you can bet the tax man’s not getting his fair share.

As The Post reported yesterday, the Harlem congressman – who chairs the powerful House Ways and Means Committee – took a “homestead” property-tax deduction on a house he owned in Washington, DC, until 2000.

Problem is the deduction only applies to a home that is an individual’s “principal place of residence” – and the law explicitly bars members of Congress from taking the break. Besides, it’s not as if Rangel has exactly given up on New York living: It came out earlier this year that the congressman occupied four rent-stabilized apartments in a Harlem building – one of which he used, also illegally, as a campaign office.

Read more: (Editorial, “Charlie’s Latest Cheat,” New York Post, 11/24/08)