Edward Kortyo Demolishes Own Home Rather Than Pay Inflated Property Tax

Howard Roark was reincarnated as Edward Koryto of Plainfield, Michigan (from the 25 May 1971 The Day).

House Torn Down In Protest of Taxes

by Piet Bennett

Grand Rapids, Mich. (AP) — “I’ll never have another house again,” says a factory worker who protested his tax assessment by razing the home it took him seven years to build from scrap lumber.

Edward Koryto standing in the rubble that used to be his home

“I will not pay for something I do not have,” Edward Koryto, 50, said as he sat amid the rubble of his home in Plainfield Township just north of Grand Rapids.

Koryto said he decided to level his house on the Grand River after its assessed value was raised by $6,800 this year.

The house was 85 per cent completed, Koryto said, but township officials fixed its market value at $11,200. An appeal lowered the evaluation by $900 but Koryto contended that meant taxes of about $250 per year, a 150 per cent increase.

Bernie Dice, the township’s tax assessor, insisted that he believed Koryto’s home was worth more than $10,000 under Michigan law. Taxes are paid on half the assessed value of property. Plainfield Township’s tax rate is $50 per thousand.

Dice said Koryto’s home had been valued at $4,400 since 1964 under a partial assessment.

“He’s just incensed that we caught up with him and put a valid assessment on it,” Dice contended.

But Koryto, who reported his assessed value had been increased by small amounts in the past, insisted his house was not worth $10,000. He claimed it was assessed for “more than the house ever thought of being worth.”

Koryto, a molder at Michigan Wheel Co. in Grand Rapids, had a friend help him raze the four-room house he had created by working nights and weekends. During the month of demolition, Koryto has lived with friends and searched for an apartment.

Koryto has other complaints about the township. He mentioned the annual spring floods, the untouched rubble of a burned out home down the road and junked cars.

“They must think I’m in a beautiful neighborhood the way they’re trying to charge me top dollar,” he complained. “You work hard and everything else and the rest of the neighborhood is just left untouched, and you just give up.”

Complaints to township officials were “just ignored,” the workman contended.

Koryto died in 1982.

From the 25 May 1912 issue of The Vote:

Women’s Tax Resistance League.

Secretary, Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, 98, St. Martin’s-lane, W.C. A silver cake basket belonging to Miss [L.E.] Turquand, Press Secretary to the Free Church League for Woman Suffrage, was sold at Sydenham. After a procession with banners, a successful protest meeting was held. Mrs. Harvey’s house at Bromley is still barricaded; nothing has happened.

From the 25 May 1917 issue of The Vote:

Taxation Without Representation.

Miss K. Raleigh.

For non-payment of Inhabited House Duty — the amount of which was seven shillings — Miss Kate Raleigh’s goods were distrained on last week at Uxbridge. Miss Raleigh naturally made use of the occasion for propaganda purposes, conversing with the tax collector for some time on the subject of Woman Suffrage, and presenting him with Suffrage literature, which he accepted. Before taking his leave he expressed himself as, on the whole, in favour of women’s claims to enfranchisement.

Miss Evelyn Sharp.

Following on the bankruptcy proceedings against Dr. Winifred S. Patch, the next victim is Miss Evelyn Sharp, the brilliant writer and speaker, whose long service to the Woman Suffrage cause is widely known and honoured. At the first meeting of “creditors” — again the only creditor is the Government, but dignified by a plural — Miss Sharp entirely disputed the claim of £56 19s. 10d. in respect of unpaid income-tax, in view of her political status as an unenfranchised woman, and the unconstitutional procedure of levying taxes without representation. For three weeks a bailiff has been in possession of Miss Sharpe’s bed-sitting room; early this week, however, all her furniture, books, and other possessions, except her bed and bath, were removed, including even her typewriter, which is certainly a tool of her craft. An added indignity and, we say, illegality, is that her letters have not only been opened but detained for a week. It is expected that the public examination will take place early in June.

The Women’s Freedom League expresses its warm appreciation of the action of these Suffragists in defending the principle of “No Taxation Without Representation.”