Pumpkin Farming Candidate Ignores Ag Issues
Wall Uses Ag Loophole to Dodge Taxes
MADISON – In the five months since beginning his Senate campaign, real estate magnate and pumpkin farmer, Terrence Wall has failed to publicly discuss any plans to support and foster Wisconsin’s vitally important agricultural industry.
As National Agriculture Week begins, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin highlighted the fact that Wall’s views on agriculture and farming here in Wisconsin are noticeably absent from his website. In fact, his website doesn’t even include anything about his famous pumpkin farm. Media reports have indicated that Wall avoided more than $264,000 in property taxes by taking advantage of Wisconsin tax laws that were set up to assist struggling farmers.
“Terrence Wall’s record on Wisconsin’s agricultural issues is limited to his milking of the tax laws specifically designed to protect family farms from developers like Wall,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate.
In 2009, Terrence Wall successfully petitioned the Middleton City Assessor to rezone his Greenway Acres commercial development in Downtown Middleton from “commercial” to “agricultural” property, specifically to avoid paying taxes on the valuable land parcels. The “agriculture” found on the property? – A few rotting pumpkins…
Before Wall convinced the City Assessor of his farming chops, the Greenway Acres development property was assessed at $2,000,000. After the rezoning, the tax liability for the “pumpkin farm” was about $10. The Middleton City Assessor, Paul Musser, told the Capital Times, “You hate to do it but it’s one of those things.” Musser also told Madison’s WKOW the law “was originally set up to preserve farmland” – not allow wealthy developers like Terrence Wall to dodge their taxes.
“Wall’s accounting gimmicks and exploitation of tax loopholes is a pattern,” said Tate.
As has been widely reported, Tax-Dodging Terrence Wall paid zero state income taxesfour of the last five nine of the last 10 12 of the last 15 years. Even conservative talk show hosts Charlie Sykes, Jeff Wagner and Mark Belling have spoken out against Wall’s tax-dodging ways, publicly admitting that multimillionaire Wall lives “in a completely different fiscal environment than most of the working people of Wisconsin.”
