US billionaire who bought lakeside home refuses to pay tax because wild geese poop on his lawn

US billionaire Tom Golisano says he tried stringing up fishing line, spraying smelly repellent and even posting a wolf decoy, but nothing could rid his lakeside holiday home of the wild Canada geese that turned his lawn into a minefield of poop.

His next line of attack? Refusing to pay his US$90,000 school tax bill until officials in the Finger Lakes town of South Bristol, New York state, find a way to control the birds.

“This past summer it was horrible. We’d drive in and find 100 to 200 geese parked on our lawn,” said Golisano, founder of payroll company Paychex and former owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team. “You can’t walk barefoot, can’t play Frisbee, can’t have your grandchildren run around. … Here I am paying all this money in taxes and I can’t use my property because of the geese droppings.”

Golisano’s stand over bird poop is just one part of his one-man protest campaign against a taxation system he believes is flawed and inequitable.

He’s pledging to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of other upstate homeowners who believe they are being overtaxed. And he recently launched a website, TaxMyPropertyFairly.com, to give taxpayers the tools to challenge their property tax bills.

Golisano contends that tax assessors often lack the training, time and expertise to accurately assign property values that determine what share of the local tax collection each homeowner pays.

“A lot of people are suffering significant injustice because of the assessment system,” said the 76-year-old Golisano, founding member of the New York Independence Party and three-time candidate for governor.