alt Hacker NewsWild idea... Maybe tax wealth instead of income?
Tax break on single home ownership, but significantly increased tax on multi-home-ownership?
It would be interesting to see comparisons between PE ownership in markets with property tax vs markets without.
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I've had the same idea, but with no property tax on ownership of a single dwelling place.
If the burden is lessened to have your own place, hopefully we could see less homeless on the street or living in cars when times are tough.
However if you have more than one, then you pay significant property tax on all of them. I would hope that could free up more places for more people getting a home.
But of course if you earn more than $180k a year, I guess you could afford some property tax.
I am also thinking foreign ownership of property should be taxed heavily. I know that is not popular, but honestly if you not living full time in the country then you are effectively taking up a spot for someone who needs a place to live.
Wealth taxes don't work because wealth gets extremely fuzzy.
For example, unsold stock that I bought 15 years ago; and then got a loan against. I'm wealthy... kinda? But I didn't sell the stock; I have unrealized gains, and you shouldn't tax me beyond income tax on borrowed money? Okay, tax me on my unrealized gains then - but then 2008 repeats itself, stock goes down 40%, do I get a refund? Of course not, I only pay when stock goes up and never down, which is not exactly a fair incentive.
Now imagine artwork I bought 15 years ago from Banksy. Or imagine my video game collection I bought on eBay that contains some rare titles. Or what about my wine collection? Now imagine I'm Elon Musk, on paper worth $400B, but if I sold even 20% of my stock, that paper valuation would be shredded from an excess of liquidity driving the share price down, so you can't tax me on what is physically impossible to realize.
Lots of jurisdictions have higher property taxes for non-owner occupants
Well, I want more multifamily housing (apartments or condos) to lower prices in good cities near pubic transit.
So let me propose: a wealth tax on land! ("Georgism"). But not a tax on the "value of improvements," i.e, buildings. This disincentivizes single-family homes near train stations (widespread in the town I grew up in) and is very low-cost to collect.
I don't know where you're writing from. But here in California, the source of all evil (Prop 13) originated with single-family homeowners trying to *escape the property taxes that result from their opposing new development.
Given how spectacularly CA housing policy has failed, perhaps it's time to try the opposite: Let's abolish all income taxes and exclusively tax land instead! (Land taxes have the property of being extremely progressive wealth taxes that are dead simple to administer.)