Owe State Taxes? Your License Could Be Affected

HARRISBURG PA – Pennsylvania real estate sales persons and brokers who owe outstanding or unpaid state taxes: beware. The PA Department of Revenue could ask the State Real Estate Commission to consider imposing an action against your license if you don’t make arrangements to pay up.

It’s apparently happening already with licensees governed by the state Insurance Department.

Mark Vessella, deputy commissioner of Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs – the agency which issues licenses to real estate practitioners and other professionals – recently confirmed impending enforcement of an executive order that requires “all applicants seeking to receive or renew various state licenses, permits and registrations (to be) compliant with their state tax obligations.”

Vessella’s acknowledgement was in response to an inquiry made by Commission counsel Judith Pachter Schulder, who in turn was following up on questions posed by Polley Associates. Pachter, in a letter to Polley Education Director Hugo Weber Jr., reported the matter was discussed during the Commission’s June 9 meeting.

Polley had been supplied with a May (2009) letter to Pennsylvania insurance licensees who were notified by the Insurance Department that they were “not compliant with Pennsylvania taxes,” according to Revenue Department records. “Please be advised,” the letter continued, that the Insurance Department “may consider appropriate enforcement action” if licensees failed to comply, including but not limited to “cease-and-desist orders, imposition of a civil penalty, and/or licensure action.”

Letter recipients were told to contact the Revenue Department within 20 days “to avoid enforcement action and resolve your tax issues.”

“Like the Insurance Department, the Bureau (of Professional and Occupational Affairs), beginning with the State Board of Accountancy, also will be sending letters to licensees who the Revenue Department advises is not compliant with Pennsylvania taxes,” Schulder’s letter to Weber said.

That means, sooner or later, real estate licensees will be due for similar tax scrutiny.

Continuing education keeps you up-to-date. Learners who took Polley Associates’ “Legal Issues 2006-2008” CE course will recall that potential effects of state tax delinquency on real estate licensees was a course discussion topic then. Our “Legal Issues 2008-2010” course will keep you similarly abreast of what’s happening in the industry now. Look for it beginning in this Fall.