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New York passes pied-a-terre tax

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Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive cities will never have enough housing. The cure is to discourage investment in them and force it into less dense cities.

They are expensive largely because of housing so your statement is a bit of a tautology. Historically NYC housing used to be a lot more affordable before they stopped building, reducing supply relative to demand and thereby raising prices.

Has anyone tried to study how much NYC housing demand is due to having a large foreign-born population (something like 37%)?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-york-city-immigrants_n_44...

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumption taxes disproportionately impact the less wealthy, who spend most of what they earn on consumption of necessities. > Don't tax things you want: working / income and investment / capital gains. What if I don't want hoarding of wealth?

In a world where you are the supreme ruler, then what you individually want matters. In our actual world, it’s more about what the society in general wants.

> In our actual world, it’s more about what the society in general wants.

God, if only!

In the actual world, it's more about what the powerful want.

Why do you think billionaires spent more fighting Mamdani than they stood to lose in new taxes?

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#383
post #281

As a New Yorker I'm thrilled. LVT/Landlording Tax next pls :) Edit: Actually, as a property tax of nonprimary residences, is this not also effectively also a Landlording tax? Will my landlord's tax bill go up because he's not residing in my building, if my building is above the threshold assessed value of $1mm? Or are >$1mm "multi-family homes" (significant % of housing of New Yorkers in BK/Queens) exempt and this on…

Will not the landlords eventually pass the expense of the new tax on to you, the tenants? They won't like dip into their savings to pay it, will they.

Eh, maybe for the more luxurious properties? But plenty of landlords are operating on tight margins and they’re not legally allowed to raise rent by more than some measure of inflation reported by the state each year.

But you’re right, the tax would have to be much more punitive to crossover into the red.

If it does make it more challenging to justify the business of being a landlord, I’m all for it though. Steps towards the end goal of more New Yorkers who want to owning their primary residence.

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The goal of this isn't simply to raise revenue, it's also to discourage parking money in empty properties when it's one of the most expensive cities to live in and doesn't have enough housing

I'm also wondering what effect it'll have on all the people that have been declaring their primary residence in Florida for tax purposes yet actually live up here in NYC a good amount of the time. My neighborhood in Brooklyn is filled with cars registered in Florida. If all of a sudden your pied-a-terre condo in Williamsburg is getting hit with $40k+/year in property taxes it might no longer make sense to try and move your residence to Florida to avoid city/state income tax.

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people start using financial terminology outside the natural context, it's either gish gallop or justifying antisocial behavior.

It is a good thing this is the natural context for this terminology then, being the literal domain for which the terminology exists. If someone doesn't understand the fundamental concepts being discussed then why should anyone give credence to their opinion? Your "gish gallop" and "justifying antisocial behavior" dismissal is almost literally how creationists dismiss discussions of evolution.

> If someone doesn't understand the fundamental concepts being discussed then why should anyone give credence to their opinion?

Because we're a democracy, we vote, and we might vote for foolish policies unless you take the time to explain to us, in language we can understand, why they're a bad idea.

It sucks that the burden is on you. I don't deny that. But the burden is on me to explain why electronic voting (without a paper trail) is bad, that climate change is real, that vaccines are essentially miraculous, and wearing a mask during a deadly global pandemic is a good thing.

And there's certainly a lot of people willing to use fancy terms to defend cryptocurrencies, but honestly, that doesn't mean they're right.

We all have to do labor to keep the electorate informed.

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#386
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It is great to want to give your kids a head start in the world, it is terrible for them and the people around them to set them up for life. How is it terrible for my kids to not have to break their back like I did to build the wealth I'm looking to pass on to them after I die? Why should they go through the same struggles that I did? It is up to them to squander it or transform it into even more wealth to pass it…

My grandparents didn't pass away until my folks were in their 60s, my remaining parent most likely won't die until I'm in my 60s.

I also went to give my children the world, but giving them a few million when they're about to retire doesn't really do much.

parents wanting to support their kids should do things like pay for college or a trade school, cover their grandkids daycare costs, help them buy their first home. We charge young parents so much money they don't have, and, much like covid, only seem to cater to old people for whatever reason. I guess because they have the money.

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here people gave Mitt Romney shit for saying $250k was middle class...

Not middle-class, middle-income. Also, that was 14 years ago.

> Not middle-class, middle-income.

Unless we are claiming the middle classes live on inherited wealth, I'm not sure the distinction is meaningful?

> Also, that was 14 years ago.

Indeed. In that time the $250k+ club has gone from 2% to 10% of American households, so Mitt Romney might have to consider ~$350k middle-income now

For a slightly more grounded perspective, Pew Research currently maintains that the middle income figure is between $60k-160k

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality, they will now just create a company in Singapore or Mongolia or another such place, which will then own the second home - while itself being owned by the original owner. Problem solved significantly cheaper than this new tax. In fact, I would not be surprised if they have already done that four months ago, when the law was being discussed. The ones who will be hit are those who do not have the legal frame…

> they will now just create a company in Singapore or Mongolia or another such place, which will then own the second home How will that help to avoid a tax on secondary residences? Are they somehow going to claim that these properties are the primary residence of a company? Seems nonsensical.

No. The residence becomes an 'asset', and the original owner (and now owner of your friendly Mongolian NYC-condo-operations company [MNYCCOC]) now pays rent to the very same MNYCCOC as the landlord. They could even consider the condo to be a very exclusive one-suite hotel and pay by day, and deduct hotel costs for living in said condo as 'necessary business expenses'. In the meantime, the MNYCCOC is a good citizen, and pays taxes but only after ... and deducts everything necessary for upkeep, from dripping faucets to elevator repair to housemaids ('janitorial staff'), making them essentially free.

It's accountancy that makes the world go round round round...

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#389
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The federal estate tax is 40% It's misleading to cite that since it basically never happens. The tax doesn't even come into the picture for fortunes below $30 million dollars (for two parents), and the rest of the time it averages ~14%. https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/the-federal-estate...

Why not repeal it, then?

Is this perhaps some sort of badly-signaled satire, or a comment mis-submitted to the wrong thread?

I cannot understand what though-process led you to suggest repealing "it", whether that means the entire tax or whether it means reducing the number of brackets.

Re: New York passes pied-a-terre tax

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't done because it has overt pathological economic characteristics. This forces the owner to write a long-term call option on a non-commodity asset without even collecting the offsetting risk premium expected for such a call option. This puts the asset permanently underwater by construction, which would crater asset values. The maths don't math. You can't just pick one side of a balanced equation and pretend th…

> It isn't done because it has overt pathological economic characteristics. A secondary home over $1 million in value also has overt pathological economic characteristics. Especially if the taxes paid on it are tragically low. > This forces the owner to write a long-term call option on a non-commodity asset without even collecting the offsetting risk premium expected for such a call option. Eminent domain already exi…

A million dollars isn't even that much these days - it isn't dynastic wealth, it is owning your own home these days. It especially isn't much in New York City - a long notoriously expensive area. A million dollars today is only about 400K in say, 1991. The average Brownstone in Brooklyn in the 1990s was over that. Not an amount to sneeze at certainly but treating it like unimaginable wealth is a lot like treating your Starbucks Manager like a CEO.

People's brains have been utterly broken by envy and combining the 'M' word or the 'B' word as the magical milestone causes them to lose all sense of scale. One needs to be well-off to get in that situation without inheritance, but it is more 'doctor or lawyer' levels of money. Hardly a level reserved for an aristocratic elite.

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