People absolutely make that argument about property taxes. That's where deferrals or abatements for e.g. elderly or low-income homeowners, or caps on property tax increases come from. Someone may own a home that property taxes price them out of, forcing them to leave their community because they can't actually conjure money from a higher priced home.

I think a lot of tax authorities also don't really aggressively reassess that regularly without a sale, so it also kind of ends up baked in that if you didn't pay that much for the property, it's only theoretically worth that much.

The only reason it works with real estate is because they can put a lien on the house and block the sale of it. They don't have any useful mechanism to stop the sale of a share of stock, but since the government is involved in the transfer (due to the registering of the new house deed) of a house, they can stop that one.

> It's strange that people always make this argument for wealth taxes, but you rarely hear it about property taxes.

I don't like property taxes either, and at minimum would rather they were called something else, and preferably replaced with per-service charges where possible.

But either way they exist to pay for things, and not to just degrade the value of your property simply because you worked to own it.

Property taxes are use taxes, not wealth taxes. Apples and oranges.

If I sell my house, there's a reasonable expected range of money I can expect for it.

If a majority stock holder in a company sells all of their stock, the price first the first share sold is likely going to be completely different (and substantially less!) than the last share sold.

It's like saying cash isn't real until you spend it. Which is true in one sense but not what they mean.