Property taxes go towards education. More right-wing bullshit attacking schools.
Then why do the schools in my town look like they’re from 1970 and never updated. Over 10k in property taxes here.
Edit. I’m all for giving my property taxes to help make kids smarter but it doesn’t seem like it’s working
But this is a bad idea.
Areas with high property value have higher quality schooling. Area with low property value have lower quality schooling. The rich stay rich. The poor stay poor.
Maybe education money shouldn’t come from property taxes. Maybe corporations should pay for the education they require their workers to have visa corporate taxes
Generally the best option is for all property taxes for education to go into one pot to by divided up fairly across all school districts in the state, that way wealthy areas don’t end up with over funded schools while rural areas and poor areas get poorly funded schools
So property tax I am ok with, in theory. The people with property in a city should pay for services like fire, schools, police, road maintenance… What gets me is when the city wants more and more for stupid shit like iPads for all students… Every 3 years due to forced upgrades or just old style deprecation over 3 years.
The amount my taxes go up each year is more than any raise I get. Then add on insurance which has gone insane. I paid off my house to avoid a 20k female flood insurance bill because a 1 foot piece of concrete touched a high risk flood zone. A technicality because if I took down a screen patio, then I wouldn’t have to pay.
It’s insane how expensive owning a house has become
Yea generally electronics is depreciated every 3 to 5 years. But I can imagine that after 3 years of children usage they are done for. That aside though, I think what you would be more looking for is a fair tax system.
What I think that the problem with local property taxes is that if a city relies on it too much to pay for everything then this causes too many issues. For a poor city this could mean that if they don’t increase the taxes they can’t afford basic school care which people expect. So they moved to riched areas who can provide that. Or they move because of the higher taxes. This in turn lowers the property value and decreases the taxes further. Which in turn increases the problem.
So I believe the educational budget should be provided by the central government so the same kind of quality in schools is given nationwide. This can of course be applied to other costs a city is making.
In addition to this I think a property tax should be progressive and link to your overall assets. If you just own one house and you don’t have any more assets. Then why should you be taxed as much as somebody who owns a lot more (of course if the house is 2m and you’re living of social security it is a different story. L
Top down education doesn’t work, that’s how we get stuck with schools that have massive IT budgets with little to show for them. Most teachers don’t use anything beyond spreadsheets and Youtube.
I don’t think that there is an easy fix.
I’d like to think local autonomy would help, so small communities could design their own curriculum, but I’m too much of a pessimist and see such experiments failing quickly because of corruption and incompetence.
While I do think there should be some relief for some people as far as property taxes are concerned… living in a town or city gives a person access to many local government subsided services. Firefighters, and ambulances are some simple ones that everyone uses. Roads as well. And the cost of that does increase over time. Basing a person’s contributions to paying for that based on the value of thier property is just easier for local governments, and more stable. But it doesn’t really corelate with the use of those services. Nor with income or ability to pay.
Life necessities really shouldn’t be taxed at most levels. Food, shelter, water, heat, medical care. Most already aren’t. But housing still is. Investment properties should be taxed of course, but an average primary residence really shouldn’t be.Looking at my electrical bill is depressing. It’s always power used x and then taxes that are the same as x plus fees. So using $100 in electricity means I pay $220 with over half being taxes and extra fees
Yeah, and property taxes result in more low density housing, as that increases the amount of tax revenue per person. High density housing means less revenue per person but the costs of services per person is still about the same. Sure theoretically, public transit is cheaper per person with high density housing, but realistically it isn’t because nobody gives a shit about public transit in the suburbs.
Of course there’s more costs overall because more suburbs mean governments are pressured to spend insane amounts of money on building and expanding highways. But it’s usually a different level of government that builds the highways, so doesn’t factor in the decisions to create more low density housing.
Nobody tell him that in Communist China you pay a small land tax once every 70 years or so.
Actually someone do tell him. I bet that little factoid will flip his entire worldview on its head.
I don’t understand inflation, so as an old landowner I think I shouldn’t have to pay taxes.
Its always guys that look like they extract peyote in their kitchen.
What’s wrong with that?
Edit: despite that peyote shouldn’t be just gathered on the wild, because they’re protected
It is kinda fucked up if retired are forced to move out from their house via taxation. Only ones who benefits are real estate companies
That’s the fictional boogeyman used by the rich to gut public services. See the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer association and California prop 13.
The tax cuts go to the rich and corporate land owners.
We could put the stipulation that you’re only exempt from tax increases if the unit is owner occupied, they’ve been there for at least five years, and the resident is retired.
We could also limit the exemption to modest homes, but instead California gives it to mansions and shopping malls too.
If you’re rich, pay your damn taxes.
Agreed
We could always, also tax the wealthy. This is not fictional. Retired people in the US are facing a crisis as they’re priced out of housing because their social security is fixed and housing prices are skyrocketing.
Property taxes do hit retired people differently though. Taxing based on what the government says your land is worth instead of your income is absolutely meant to create opportunities for real estate agents and developers at the expense of the people living there.
Taxes based on assets tax those with assets, instead of income taxes which tax those who work.
If old man owns such a valuable piece of land, he deserves to pay his fair share for the public services he used.
It’s like saying you don’t want to pay for schools because you’re not a student.
Gotta be one of the most dogshit takes I’ve ever seen, hope you’re evicted one day!
The fact that schools are funded by the surrounding area is crap and needs to change. He’s retired with a social security income. He paid into the system his entire life already. Telling him he must sell and move out because he’s not wealthy enough is exactly what we should be working against. It’s a system by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
Of course you are looking at outliers and I feel like you’re right to the point that outliers like that should have special assessments or breaks.
Where I live, the taxes are pretty high for real estate, but if you are a senior citizen, you can get a discount where your tax rate is locked in at the value that it was when you retired.
I also have some acquaintances who inherited a house and at the time houses were very cheap but they didn’t pay the taxes and they were super upset that they were going to lose their house because they didn’t pay the taxes.
So now they’re bunking up and living in apartments and Scattered because they didn’t want to drum up the two or three thousand dollars a year in real estate taxes that they had to pay to keep an entire house.
Yeah and those laws are great for keeping people who want to age in place in their homes. Unfortunately they aren’t the norm. Usually it’s just a discount but it still goes up.
The fact that schools are funded by the surrounding area is crap and needs to change. It’s a system by the wealthy, for the wealthy.
Unless there is an article or background on the guy in the picture you’re projecting a HUGE amount of stuff you just made up on that guy.
He’s retired with a social security income.
That’s what his sign says. I take him at his word on that one.
He paid into the system his entire life already.
Well, no he didn’t. He didn’t start paying into it until he started earning money. Likely for the first 18 years of his life, he lived of what other people put into the system. Many of those people that paid for him are in the situation he’s in right now, except now he sees it as unfair.
Telling him he must sell and move out
No one is telling him to move out. He certainly isn’t saying he will be forced to move if he has to continue to pay property taxes. You just made that up.
because he’s not wealthy enough is exactly what we should be working against.
He’s not saying he is not wealthy enough. You just made that up. In fact, his sign is indicating he does have he wealth to cover the property taxes via his Social Security. He’s saying he doesn’t’ believe he should have to pay anything one something he bought decades ago while he continues to enjoy the services of the city and society the tax dollars pay for.
No, that’s how American K-12 schools are funded. That and infrastructure. Which is why poor areas have worse schools and roads; and police from outside their tax area. Which is both a great way to punish the poor in the old school protestant fashion and force them out the second the wealthy want their land.
And you know exactly what I mean by paying in his entire life.
Finally, paying half your income on property taxes is not financially sustainable. It’s ridiculous to me that you would even pretend it is.
No, that’s how American K-12 schools are funded.
Partially true, but not absolutely. K-12 in many places in the USA are funded through property taxes. I’m in the USA and my public school system is funded via income tax. No property taxes go to school.
That and infrastructure.
True in some places. False in others. Some places derive income from high property taxes. Other places choose high sales taxes. Yet others do it on income tax.
Which is why poor areas have worse schools and roads; and police from outside their tax area. Which is both a great way to punish the poor in the old school protestant fashion and force them out the second the wealthy want their land.
Again, partially true. Some states have state taxes that fund various projects at the municipal level irrespective of the wealth of the locality.
I don’t disagree that a more equitble system for funding schools should be designed and implemented, but you know know that because I’m trying to have that discussion with you in another thread and you’re weak as water on that and won’t discuss any specifics except “someone else should pay”.
And you know exactly what I mean by paying in his entire life.
I know your words on that don’t match reality, and you’re skipping a really important part of that reality. I’ll admit I was wrong one part of that. I said he likely started “paying into the system at age 18”. We know thats wrong. His sign tells us he built his house at age 25. Age 25 is when he would be first paying the property taxes he’s complaining about. So he’s spent even less time paying into the system and already wants to be except from it for the society benefits he still gets.
Finally, paying half your income on property taxes is not financially sustainable. It’s ridiculous to me that you would even pretend it is.
Again, you’re making stuff up from nothing. What are his expenses? He owns his house. He’s retired so his healthcare is covered by Medicare. If he’s living on just social security he’s likely not even paying income tax because his income is low. What are his other expenses? Food? Clothing? Electricity? Water? He might have a well and not even have that bill. Are you saying half his income can’t cover those things? Further, we have no idea what he earned in life. Did he spend it on stupid stuff? We don’t know. I’m certainly not claiming any of my assumptions of him as fact, but that isn’t stopping you from doing so.
So you’re just doubling down on what if this and that.
i mean, this is less of a property tax issue and more of a social security thing.
Though i am pretty fundamentally against property tax, it’s a physical thing that i can own, i don’t see why i should pay taxes on it. If you want to tax me just hit me with income tax.
Property has infrastructure like water, roads, electrical, sewers, etc running to it that needs to be maintained. It also has things like fire fighting police surveyors etc that need to be paid in order to maintain society. Everyone could work in a city therefore the city/county/state would collect the income tax but the local town you live in doesn’t get any of that money.
there’s also stuff like gas tax, which often funds roads. Infrastructure often isn’t really related to the amount of property there is anyway. It’s related to the amount of land, and density per sq mile. But i guess you could charge farmers a lot of property tax, since they own a lot of land, that will solve that problem.
It’s a wealth tax on wealth that’s very difficult to hide.
except for the fact that it’s a wealth tax on wealth that’s not really consequential. An income tax by definition must tax ALL income earned by an individual, you cannot hide from that, it’s definitionally, evasion.
How is real estate wealth not consequential?Real estate wealth is real wealth, it’s why it’s literally in the name.
Personal income tax is not a wealth tax, and there are myriad ways to avoid it without evading it.
it’s pretty fundamental, there is only a fixed amount of land that exists in the country. A billionaire has roughly 1 billion more dollars than i do. I have roughly one billion dollars less than them, they, weirdly enough, don’t have one billion more times land than me.
Theoretically they should have “1 billion times more property tax” than i do, but i’m going to imagine that’s not even possible under current tax law.
Personal income tax is not a wealth tax, and there are myriad ways to avoid it without evading it.
yeah, because then it’s not income.
Killing time are you being intentionally obtuse just to kill time?
Cause you don’t own it. You are borrowing it from the government.
yeah but then i shouldn’t have to pay for it, i should be able to rent it, or lease it. Which to be fair, i guess leasing is the closest thing.
People need to stop thinking about property like it’s any other regular thing like a vehicle.
Land is not a thing it is a limited resource.
If someone owns a piece of land in a city it doesn’t matter what they are currently doing with it, even if they do nothing with it, that’s wasting potential that someone else could be doing with it and affects everyone around that piece of land.
that is true, but it’s not like we have things like imminent domain.
income tax.
the wealthy dodge this by a bunch of schemes that don’t count as ‘income’.
I hate paying property tax, but reckon it’s the only way to get money out of the fortunate ones that are lucky enough to own a chunk.
It’s pretty easy to dodge property taxes also.
Why don’t you share how?
because you can literally find it on the internet, it’s not a big secret or something. It’s literally the law, and the law is public.
And the bigger the chunk, the more they owe.
but that’s not going to be comparative to the amount of wealth they own though. Unless of course you artificially raise the value of land, but that’s not going to make it any more expensive now is it?
Not for the billionaires, no, though they probably have several homes and lots of acreage and still pay significantly more than you and I. Better the wealthy pay more even if it’s not going to scale precisely.
yeah, that’s called tax evasion, which is fraudulent. That’s bad. I feel like i don’t have to explain this, but the obvious implication is that we should fix tax evasion, by preventing loopholes. And shutting down the rest of the frankly, redundant tax law that doesn’t really do anything except make it more complicated, and harder to track.
Comparing property taxes now in 2025 dollars to unadjusted original cost in 1950 dollars is nonsensical. The two numbers bear no relation nor should they.
The average social security check is $1,978 a month or $23,736 per annum. Half of that is $11,868. Lets suppose he lives in CA where the annual rate for owner occupied is 0.74%. His house would be worth approx 1.6 million dollars. To to be clear he is whining about paying the appropriate and legal tax on his fully owned 1.6M cash hoard. This is a great problem to have.
If its that burdensome he can cash out and even with rent payments for the rest of his life live great even if he has no other savings of any sort.
Looks like about $5800 a month gradually increasing with inflation for at least 25 years.
If he has another $400,000 which seems super likely since I don’t think he’s actually living in his 1.6M house on $12,000 a year it could be more than 7500 a month.
If we add a little realism and only include another 15 years he could probably actually withdraw about 11,000 a month.
https://www.kiplinger.com/retirement/social-security/average-monthly-social-security-check https://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/property-tax-by-state
Lets suppose he lives in CA where the annual rate for owner occupied is 0.74%. His house would be worth approx 1.6 million dollars.
That’s largely due to the property inflation from the tech sector and not consistent across the state. You could be in San Fransisco and see your land 10x in value as the city explodes around you or you could be at the ass end of Oakland or the rural east end and still live in a slum.
This guy could also be from Texas - in the exurbs of Austin, Dallas, Houston, or El Paso - and be looking at closer to 1.5-2% annual rates. Very possible he acquired some dirt cheap land in Beaumont or Bexar County only to see his $5k plot balloon to $100-200k over the course of 20 years.
I think it’s the moral issue of having to cash out your own property to afford to live in something you built and already own
Property tax funds important things like schools, emergenct services, etc.
if he was destitute otherwise would already have sold it. You are arguing in favor of a tax break for some rich prick probably worth north of 3 million not paying the taxes that pay for your kid to get a decent education because basically feels.
Its no more immoral than you giving up your income.
There is no way you can convince me that gentrification is actually good for kids. Property tax funding education does nothing but punish poor families.
Property taxes funding education, in a state like Texas where school districts are seized by the state and systematically dismantled by private equity interests operating in state-appointed positions, is a fucking joke.
This isn’t strictly an issue of taxation. Its an issue of (un)representative governance forcing people into a privatized model by leveraging the pain caused through dysfunctional public services. “Oh oh! Crimes up! We need even more cops! Oh oh! Schools are failing! So we need more… checks notes football stadiums and administrative offices.”
It’s deliberate mismanagement intended to destroy confidence in public institutions.
For those who want more info on this, here’s the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Property taxes on your first house should not be steep. On your other houses on the other hand…
I argue that we should replace property taxes with income taxes because property taxes lead to disparities in outcomes between different jurisdictions. Then an old man can be secure in his own property without depriving the public of funds.
And I disagree with your premise that property taxes pay for a decent education. We don’t have decent education in the United States and I truly believe that no amount of money will fix that
1.6M cash hoard
Cash is liquid, the theoretical home in question is not.
Seconded. This is inaccessible net worth. It is useless to someone who cannot take advantage of it. Sale would incur capital gains, which would be significant, and finding another property to live in would be just as unaffordable.
To be fair this dude could have gotten his house 45 years ago for 50K. So adjusting for inflation and overall development of his area, it could make sense. Comparing current payments to cost of money 40 years ago is comparing apples to oranges.
Now all that being said…there is a serious issue with cost and availability of housing, and I am not dismissing that. I’m just saying context is needed for this ragebait post.
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at the primary residence up to .25 acres. Anything more than that should be taxed as normal. Credits should be non transferrable, as in if you’re renting your landlord shouldn’t be able to claim you for tax exempt status.
.25 acres? Can we up that to at least an acre. I need a place for my chickens to roam and to plant my gardens, and I prefer to have a fire pit with outdoor patio furniture and a grill. Many places an acre is the standard plot size. Not good for everyone, but preferred by many
Yes, we can cover the resulting tax shortfall by increasing the tax on single mothers, first-generation low-income homebuyers, and renters.
Look at the result of California’s tax policy (which was designed with aims similar to yours): an entire generation of young people will never be able to afford a home in the place they grew up in, while millionaire retirees get a huge tax break while making thousands renting out spare rooms in their massive houses on AirBnB.
These kinds of special tax carve outs sound nice in theory, because it seems like you are just “not taking money from old and disabled people”, but that tax burden falls on everyone else, as does the massive distortion of the market. You are in fact taking more money from other people, who may be hurting even more.
And don’t tell me, “We’ll fund it by a tax on the rich”. If that’s your proposal, get that tax on the rich passed, and dole out the proceeds to elderly at risk of homelessness. Have it officially be budgeted, so that we can decide if keeping an elderly person in their $2.1m 5 bedroom home is worth cuts elsewhere. As of now, such policies are mostly robbing middle class young people blind.
Solution build excess housing at a loss, intentionally until real estate prices go down.
I like that idea, but it’d have to come with some mechanism to prevent parasites from buying a bunch of them up and renting them out.
fuck if I know what such a mechanism would look like though…
Tax homes based on how many you own, and how many are vacant. Allow two homes at a regular rate; Enough for a summer and winter home. Then ratchet tax rates up as the person buys more.
And if the third, fourth, fifth, etc home sits vacant for more than a few months out of the year? The tax rate goes up even more, so giant corporations can’t just buy entire neighborhoods and sit on them to remove them from the market and increase property values for the other homes they own across town. Because that’s what’s happening now; Giant corps are buying homes and letting them sit vacant, just to remove them from the market so they can charge higher rates elsewhere. Allow a few months of grace for renovations and finding tenants… But after a ~3 month grace period, that tax rate skyrockets.
And then take the revenue from these increased taxes, and use them to fund First Time Homebuyer programs, so home ownership becomes more available to the people who are renting. Incentivize the corporations to actually flip the houses and resell or rent them, instead of just sitting on them.
Nobody needs a summer and winter home tax the living shit out of rich fuckers with 2
Alternate take: If we actually implemented my above plan, you wouldn’t need to be stupidly rich to own two homes. Home prices would be reasonable, because there wouldn’t be giant corporations hoarding all of the real estate.
We have over two vacant houses for every single homeless person in the country. We could give every single homeless person a house, and still have plenty to act as summer cabins. And that’s before you even factor in the fact that the market would be flooded with houses (at least in the short term) from corporations trying to avoid the increased taxes.
It will NEVER be so that owning two houses in America doesn’t involve being well into the 1% This is just an absurd take that has become true nowhere on planet earth.
Is this guy paid by some rich guys wanting to abolish property taxes?
Here the increases are capped at 3% per year if you live in the house. I lived in a shitty house we bought for 35k in the 1990s crash, and property taxes when we sold it in the breakup 20 years later were still under 1k a year, though insurance was crazy high. With husband we had to buy a much more expensive house, there are no shitty ones for sale anymore, all are snatched by corps to flip and rent. So now it’s high but in 20 years maybe it will seem low again. Especially if the market crashes and it’s re-assessed more reasonably.
It’s just inflation, I do think someone owning a home costs the city in roads, trash, transit, other services, Is not crazy to tax on property ownership.
Inflation is also not what the guy with the sign is taking into account in his complaint. He’s at least 40 years older in that picture than he was when he bought his property if he’s getting social security. The real purchasing power of whatever he paid back then is much smaller than the same number of dollars is now.
$5000 in January 1985 would be the same as $15,055.50 now according to the inflation calculator on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website
Also, it’s only every three years that he’s paying that much. Honestly, he’s not making the point he thinks he is.
We need taxes to fund emergency services and local government in general. The problem isn’t that taxes go up in dollar amount. The problem is that the 1% take everything for themselves, leaving the rest of us to fight over crumbs. Our pay and public benefits (like social security) don’t rise with inflation because of the actions of the rich.
The solution is so obvious, but we spend so much time arguing about everything but the real problem.
I wonder if there should be an exemption for those on Social Security.
That said, I don’t know of a good way to ensure that an exemption like that wouldn’t be abused.
My city has a senior discount on property taxes, where seniors that have a net worth and income both below certain numbers pay reduced or as low as 0% of their regularly assessed property tax. I’m not sure how they verify net worth, but it seems like a good system to me as long as they have figured out a way to do that efficiently and effectively
I think most places have a senior freeze, so once you qualify it doesn’t go up anymore.
America is such a shitshow (at least one person thinks it isn’t, which is wild).
So he bought a house for 6k 50 years go and now has to pay 2k in property taxes each year. If he was renting that wouldn’t cover two months.
Does he also complain that the sales tax on candy bar is more than he used to pay for a candy bar when he first bought his house?
The real problem if that’s the scenario is that his social security check is less than $400/month.
Its almost 2000
Which means he’s paying $12k in property taxes a year. That does sound quite substantial. Assuming that’s somewhat equivalent to rates in the UK, I pay around £1400.
Most places are around 1% of value with many having caps on increases in value or other differences in taxed and actual value. This means his house is worth 1,000,000 to 1,600,000
If he was really living on 24k he wouldn’t be able to pay 12,000 in property tax. He bought when it cost almost nothing and spent most of his life paying neither rent nor mortgage unlike most of us and has a reasonable retirement.
He could at any time sell and live better than you or I even if he didn’t have a dime other than the house. Instead he uses his time to whine about his good fortune.
You are making a lot of assumptions there but setting that aside, I’m not sure I’m in favour of turfing a pensioner out of their home to pay tax because they lucked out. Surely it’d be better to settle up after they die. It’s not like he’s preventing a needy young family moving in - presumably anyone buying this house would need to be pretty wealthy!
Step one make schools mostly dependent on property tax by funding them almost entirely through property tax Step two watch the price of housing skyrocket to the point where half of them are owned by old fuckers Step three make old fuckers fully or partially exempt from this tax Step four wonder why your schools have basically been defunded
Lets imagine a scenario bob the old lives at 65 lives in a 2M home which isn’t exactly a castle its just in a really desirable area. Bob is cash poor but house rich. He’s going to be taxes out of his home sooner or later without relief. Suppose we provide him that relief.
Shall we let him sell his house and realize his gains. Tax those gains but leave him enough to live wealthy for the next 20 years and collect 20 years of 1% taxes or about 660k with 5% appreciation. We would also collect around 300k of that 2M in capital gains taxes.
All in all we are giving up almost a million dollars in tax revenue which will be collected by taxing people who aren’t sitting on a 1.7M pot of gold. We will be taxing lots of folks barely getting by MORE to write a million dollar check to grandpa.
Then when he dies all those capital gains that were in fact real evaporate because the new owner who inherits it gets to start fresh at present value.
To justify your position I want you to imagine going around to a bunch of poor people’s apartments and taking stuff out of their house to give to one rich guy. Yes someone who is “house rich” doesn’t SEEM rich but assets are fungible and in a good market remarkably liquid.
“I don’t understand how inflation works and I’m blaming government for it”
I think an issue is that taxes are not seen for what they are. The government and agency work on our behalf but don’t get paid until I pay my taxes. Maybe the local government just needs to send these bills to people’s houses instead and get rid of taxes altogether.
I disagree that it’s an issue. I believe vast majority of people understand what a tax is, even if they feel taxes are shitty and respond with blame-y frustration. All words will be misunderstood by some people. Sometimes more and sometimes fewer. If we kept changing the name of things because a vocal minority of people can’t read a dictionary, then we will end up with a handful of generic words that don’t actually mean anything. I believe a better solution is to envest in education more broadly.
Eh, probably paid like 25k for a house that’s worth 500k now or something. Really what we need to do is make property taxes scale more aggressively, so it isn’t economical to hoard more resources than you can actually use. Maybe something like annual tax owed = (value of all real estate owned by one person)^2/10,000,000. Perhaps with a grace period for new construction/renovations.
As for appraisal, let people declare what their property is worth, and force them to sell if someone offers 20% more than their claimed value.
As for appraisal, let people declare what their property is worth, and force them to sell if someone offers 20% more than their claimed value.
Ah yes, force people to move out of their homes. What’s lemmy’s obsession with uprooting families lately?
Has nothing to do with “uprooting families”. Average American families are not the ones grossly overestimating the values of their property. It’s people like Trump who use overestimated values on their properties in order to hide money and grift people into paying him more than properties are actually worth. And then readjusting to actual values, or lower, in order to dodge taxes.
Yeah but under this system you’d HAVE to overestimate, otherwise it gets forcibly bought from you.
This is just going to drive prices way up till everyone is renting from one of 3 giant corpos.
Land is a natural resource, and like air or sunlight, nobody deserves to own it more than anybody else.
“But my family has live here for generations!” sounds awful similar to “I deserve it because my great great grandfather killed the people that used to live here.”
You get to decide how much the land is worth to you. If you value it honestly and somebody else values it higher, a trade benefits both of you.
I value your home more than you, now get the fuck out and find a new one.
In fact going by your first sentence, this system isn’t even necessary. Why do you deserve to live where you do just because you paid some random person money? I deserve the land you’re living on just as much as you do.
Money represents things you do deserve, like the value created by your own work, as well as things you have no moral claim to, like natural resources. What makes sense to me is that the land is owned collectively. The property taxes are effectively rent to the rest of the population, and those that consider it most valuable should get to use it. I also think there should be separate taxes for things that devalue the land, like extracting minerals. You can still make a profit from extracting minerals based on the value added by your own work, but you need to pay the rest of humanity for their share of the minerals themselves.
Have to consider both the ideal and the existing situation for the best next step. Housing is a combination of value both created by human effort, and an accumulation of natural resources. I think what I’ve proposed is a big step towards fair allocation of housing, but critically, also something that could actually be implemented.
money represents things you do deserve
Of course that means capitalists are the most deserving of all.
I really like the self appraisal idea
Investment company comes in and buys literally everything because they can just offer 20% over value. Now they rent it out for twice as much as your mortgage cost. What are you going to do, not like there are any other houses left.
Think about what the investment company’s tax rate would look like. They’d be bankrupt instantly. They’d have to pay 10M/year in taxes to maintain ownership of $10M in property.
They can just increase rents then?
So rent is several times more expensive than a mortgage on the same property. Now what?
Now you pay the ridiculous rent because blackstone just buys up entire neighborhoods already, might as well buy up entire towns.
Why? You can force them to sell you a property and pay less on the mortgage than they pay on the same property on taxes.
Technically yes, but the problem is that they can afford to hold their investments in many small companies so they won’t even have to pay that much tax.
Just adding government oversight for this idea is going to be a costly nightmare.
That’s not how this works. A better solution would be to tax more aggressively second+ homes and severely limit what corporations can invest into.
Why should a company be able to profit off of second hand housing? This isn’t a commodity, but it’s treated as such. Companies should be able to build new housing (for sale) and own housing only for the purposes of, say, housing their employees if they so wish. I simply see no benefits to allowing companies trade living spaces like stocks.
What does someone deserve to own? The value created by your own work yes, but nobody deserves to own natural resources like land more than anybody else. The whole point is that you get to decide how much the property is worth to you. If it’s worth more to someone else, you’re both better off for the trade. The only losers here are people trying to cheat on their taxes by giving a “low” appraisal, and people trying to hoard multiple properties.
Plug some numbers into that formula. If you own a $100k property, you pay 1k in taxes/year If you own 10 of those properties, you pay 100k/year. This would mean you have to charge more in rent than a mortgage would cost to buy the same property. The business model would become unprofitable.
I understand the logic of it, my point is that this is a trust/honesty based system which leaves you cornered. Here are some problems with it:
- placing a low value on my house to pay less taxes exposes me to a hostile buyout
- placing a realistic (e.g. around average for the region) price doesn’t solve the previous problem. I’m still in danger of a hostile buyout, while also paying higher taxes. What’s more, even if everyone else plays fairly, this additional % someone else paid to take my house is now the minimum added on top of their own valuation, driving prices up.
- placing an unreachably high price would bankrupt me as I can’t pay the taxes, so there is no scenario in which this works out for me
- given a realistic and unequal economy, there will be those who can’t afford to place a higher price on their house, i can just go and buy them out on sale, then rent them back to them (that one might sound familiar)
The fault in your assumption is 1. that this would discourage corporations from buying up; and 2. That you live in an equal and just society;
The fault in your assumption is 1. that this would discourage corporations from buying up;
Did you plug in some numbers to see how much you pay when you own multiple homes? Rental units are not profitable when people can buy a house for cheaper than your property taxes on the same property. And normal people can do hostile buyouts from corporate landords too.
Sounds like a problem for the renters.
Socialise the housing market and make sure every person has a roof over their head. It’s the only proven solution to homelessness.
