alt Hacker NewsProperty tax is the workable wealth tax. There's no such thing as a perfect policy, but in the context of NYC this seems worth trying. I'll be interested to see if it helps create some liquidity in the housing market (the goal), or if it only functions as revenue source.
One wrinkle I haven't heard much discussion of -- cities respond to incentives too. NYC is a global destination for the mega wealthy. If it turns out the uber-rich don't mind paying and this becomes a cash cow for the city, that creates incentives for the city to cater to them and try and get more uber-rich people to have second homes in the city.
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The fairest and easiest to realize wealth tax is on inheritance. It is great to want to give your kids a headstart in the world, it is terrible for them and the people around them to set them up for life.
Yup, very "Georgist", which I'm a huge fan of. You can move your money to another country, or hide it entirely in stocks that you borrow against until you die. But, you gotta live somewhere. Land is the only thing the state really has, and it's limited; it's the best thing to tax.
> helps create some liquidity in the housing market (the goal)
Is that the stated goal? I thought the goal was to generate revenue from the tax. It's true that triggering sales will create a one-time boost in sales-related taxes, but that's just temporary.
> Property tax is the workable wealth tax.
There is a difference between property-as-primary-residence and property-as-secondary/tertiary-residence or property-as-proxy-for-parking-money.
Property taxes handle the first scenario, wealth taxes handle the latter.
This also closes some loopholes/arbitrages around declaration of primary residence for purposes of NYC income tax. There are C-suite execs who declare residence in CT/NJ while spending < 180 nights/year in NYC in their huge apartment, allowing them to avoid NYC income tax.
Anyway, NYC real estate taxes are a mess and in some cases regressive.
For example, taxes are based on values set by the city which for the ultra high end, the are understated by an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE..
See: > Griffin purchased his 24,000-square-foot penthouse at 220 Central Park South in 2019 for $238 million. ..t he city values the apartment at just $15.5 million .. property tax bill for the 2026-2027 tax year is $858,332
.. Griffin’s property tax bill would more than double to $1.87 million .. in the 2028-2029 tax year, it would increase to just under $4 million
I don't feel terribly about someone paying $4M on property probably worth close to $400M at the moment. Normal high income NYers already pay $10-20k/year on properties worth $1.5M by comparison.
Another regressive aspect there was a proposal to change was a purchase tax for cash purchases. Currently one of the closing costs in NYC/NYS is a mortgage recording tax of nearly 2% of mortgage amount. This means if you are rich enough to buy in cash, you can avoid this tax. And if you are a rich cash buyer you are probably buying a higher end property so.. doubly regressive in a sense.
> I'll be interested to see if it helps create some liquidity in the housing market
lol. why would it? if you tax something, you get less of it.
there is not even close to any kind of shortage of demand for housing in NYC. there is an enormous shortage of supply; it is in fact _illegal_ in most places to build more supply.
Property taxes have the added benefit to lower property prices, and the money can go on improving the city. (Which make properties prices go higher)
Who benefits most of a city being improved by tax dollar spending? Property owners. They benefit in the range of hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars each. Thus it makes sense they contribute the most tax dollars.
Or show me a worker who benefits the same amount of money from the city being improved.
No, a tax will always reduce demand \saying otherwise basically ignores decades of established economics.
> that creates incentives for the city to cater to them
What does that even mean? If catering to the wealthy was profitable, everyone would do it. Just look at Dubai, it's built entirely around that model, and it's a brutally competitive space. NYC attracts the mega-wealthy for a different reason: network effects. Meta-wealthy come to be around other mega-wealthy people.
Property tax is not a workable wealth tax.
It's a barrier for low income people to buy homes.
Sales tax is a workable wealth tax.
> If it turns out the uber-rich don't mind paying and this becomes a cash cow for the city, that creates incentives for the city to cater to them and try and get more uber-rich people to have second homes in the city.
The tax is reasonably small enough that I wouldn't expect a lot of wealthy people from divesting from their properties, but it's probably going to make them think twice about buying new properties.
That second-order effect is the important balancing act for any locality-based wealth tax. If you make the tax too high it starts discouraging the behavior you're taxing, which can paradoxically reduce overall tax revenue.
France discovered this the hard way when they implemented their first wealth tax: Many ultra-wealthy people moved their capital out of France to avoid the tax, which was suspected to have had an overall decreasing effect on tax revenue from that demographic. They replaced the wealth tax with a property tax, which probably played a large role in inspiring this pied-à-terre policy.