How To Get Multiple Tax ID's? And Iowa Comments
Last year five of us went to Iowa for the tax sale. There is certainly a lot of competition.
In Davenport, for example, there are four groups that have about 300 tax id numbers each. Some of these are clearly 300 LLCs, but some appear to be simple partnerships. These people paid $100 per tax id number to participate, so just to sit down at the table you have to have invest about $30,000.
Can we simply "declare" a partnership to the IRS and get a Tax id number? Or do we need to form several hundred LLCs? As a practical matter we probably won't be back in Des Monies, but we would like to know how to get a bunch of id numbers.
Each county in Iowa has different rules. Some clerks told us they did not "allow" bidding down, even though this is against the law. Some counties have a one person, one id number rule, others might allow 10 per person, or unlimited.
In one county, there were two dozen college students who had been hired through Manpower and given instructions not to bid below 100%. They got nothing, and whoever hired them wasted a lot of money. It is hard to hire flunkies to do work that requires some serious thinking.
Also, about mail bids. We were repeatedly told by numerous county collectors that mailed bids were only opened at the end of the day, and if the property had not been sold then you could buy it that way. The only properties that don't sell are duds, so I would advise against mailed bids.
But back to my question, how do I get the tax ids?[ Edited by FHurdle on Date 05/03/2004 ]
In how many counties total did you have a chance to participate in last year? How many TLC did you buy? Is some redeemed already? How was your experience overall?
Sorry, a lot of questions.