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The town has moved to transfer a complex tax case involving Tariq and Kamran Farid, owners of Edible Arrangements International, to a specialized tax court in New Britain. At issue is the ownership, tenancy and tax-exemption status of a school they purchased in 2010 with the intent of coverting it into an Islamic Academy.
The brothers bought the former Pine Brook/Wightwood Elementary School at 56 Stony Creek Rd. in 2010, with a plan to convert it into an Islamic school. It has now fallen into disrepair and is up for sale. In recent years, the school has been damaged in two separate broken sprinkler system incidents, one in 2010 and another in February, 2011.
Earlier this year, on January 31, 2014, the town declared the building structurally unsafe for human use.
Soon after their Branford purchase, the brothers opened an Islamic school in Guilford, and transferred ownership of the Branford property to the SKF Stony Creek, LLC, a for-profit company they own. Branford then began levying taxes on the property, which the brothers appealed. It is this tax case that landed in New Haven Superior Court.
A Specialized Tax Court
The town first moved to dismiss the case in Superior Court on June 3 and yesterday filed a motion to transfer the entire case to the Tax Session, a specialized department within the Connecticut Superior Court that operates in New Britain. The court hears complex tax cases; the town’s attorney handling this case, Carolyn W. Kone, said the Farid case falls into this category on a variety of fronts.
“This tax appeal raises numerous complex legal and factual issues, including but not limited to whether any of the three plaintiffs, — the SKF Stony Creek LLC., the Shoreline Islamic Academy, and Tariq Farid and Kamran Farid, Trustees of the Farid Foundation — have standing to bring this action,” Kone wrote.
One question raised is whether the property, which covers 2.76 acres, plus school buildings and a separate house, is “exempt in full or even in part from municipal taxation.” Another issue, Kone wrote, centers on the school’s effort to achieve tax exempt status when the application seeking tax- exempt status was filed by a non- exempt entity, the brothers’ for- profit company. Finally Kone raises the question of whether any of the plaintiff’s claims are barred by the statute of limitations.
“In view of these complex issues,” Kone said the town requests “that the case be transferred to the tax session at New Britain, which has extensive experience and expertise in these matters.”
The Tax Session has exclusive statewide jurisdiction over the tax appeals sent to it.
In moving to dismiss the case, Kone told the court that in her judgment, none of the plaintiffs, including the brothers, their companies or their foundation, has standing to bring the case to court.
Town records show the brothers and their foundation quit-claimed the Branford school property on July 24, 2012, to their SKF Stony Creek, LLC, a company with the same address in Wallingford as the corporate headquarters of Edible Arrangements. The town attorney says SKF Stony Creek has no tax exemption status.
Town: School No Longer Tax-Exempt
The town has valued the 2.76-acre school property at $1.8 million and assessed the property at $1.2 million. Barbara Neal, the town’s tax assessor, determined that the Farid brothers must pay taxes on the property because it was not tax-exempt after July 24, 2012 when the quit claim was filed.
The subsequent tax appeals case lists as plaintiffs SKF Stony Creek LLC., the Shoreline Islamic Academy, and Tariq Farid and Kamran Farid, Trustees of the Farid Foundation. The plaintiffs claimed that the town’s tax assessment of $1.2 million is “not the percentage of its true and actual value on the assessment date, but was grossly excessive, disproportionate and unlawful.”
The plaintiffs initially appealed to the Branford Board of Assessment Appeals (BBAA), citing not-for-profit, tax-exempt status. The BBAA declined to hear the appeals because the property is worth over $1 million, a designation that allows the appeals board not to rule but allow the petitioners to file a tax appeal directly to the court.
The Farids were also informed that even if their case went to court, they were still required to pay 90 percent of their taxes. A year ago, on June 5, 2013, the town’s tax collector filed a tax lien against the school property.
The town also filed a motion seeking a 30-day extension to reply to a series of interrogatories filed by the attorney for the Farid brothers. If the case is transferred, a different court schedule will likely be set.
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