No need for discussion I guess. Someone from the internet has the correct conclusion...
Hard to take stuff like this seriously.
High property taxes are good
151–160 of 620 posts
Re: High property taxes are good
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Property Taxes aren't terrible for old people. How the mille-rate is set is terrible for old people. A fixed mille-rate results in taxes going up as value goes up. This might be difficult to plan for and manage. However, many cities will simply put a lien on the property and collect when the property is sold/transferred/person dies. However, this isn't necessarily how things need to be done. In New Zealand, the mille…
Cities would stop caring about new residents then (as they've done in Canada.) They mostly cater to the existing residents that own homes and partake in municipal voting. They'll stop creating new housing developments and put massive permitting fees on proposals for new construction.
No, it doesn't stop development. New houses increase the value of the land it is sitting on, so the tax from that plot of land will go up.
The entire goal should be to encourage residents to partake in municipal voting. That's everyone's responsibility as citizens.
Re: High property taxes are good
#153Land value taxes are even better. Property taxes provide a disincentive to making the land more productive. A land value tax would incentivize residential landowners to build more units which provides more supply and would lower rents.
The biggest problem (IMO) is that it's not so simple to value land. Where I live, being two blocks over can make a huge difference. It's easy to say "you paid $500k for your house, so we're gonna tax you on $500k". It's much harder to accurately say what someone would have paid for the land were it not developed. I understand the benefits of LVT, but how do you solve this? Are there any good examples of governments t…
Wikipedia has some examples of places where it is used: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Re: High property taxes are good
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can always choose to live in a cheaper home. So your 90 year old grandpa has been living in a two bedroom apartment on the lower east side for 65 years. When he moved in at age 25, it was considered a crummy but affordable neighborhood, but now it's expensive and desirable. You want a 90 year old to have to move? I agree that maybe a 65 year old couple no longer needs to be in a 3,000 square foot home, but ther…
Why does grandpa get to live in a two bedroom apartment in the LES during retirement when so many other people can't afford it despite working for a living ? If he owns, you'd think that he could sell the two bedroom and downgrade to a one bedroom to keep the monthly cost down. Or even a studio. But at some point it's an incredibly desirable, expensive neighborhood and I'm not sure anyone deserves the privilege to li…
Because 90 year old grandpa can't move as easily as us youngins and it's not his fault that the neighborhood gentrified around him. At this point he can't afford to the taxes on a studio either. But anyway, the process of moving is really pretty tough at that age, even the logistics of finding a new apartment and hiring movers. Now, you move out to the suburbs because you can't afford the city anymore, but you don't drive because you are 90, so it isn't so easy to buy groceries anymore. You gotta find a new ophthalmologist, cardiologist and primary care doctor instead of seeing the folks you've been going to for the last 10 years.
Maybe 65 is too young for retirement age, but I certainly feel that there is an age at which old people should start getting special privileges, like the right to not have to move. And the rest of us can wait our turns and hope that we get to take advantage of those privileges some day.
Re: High property taxes are good
#155Re: High property taxes are good
#156Land value taxes are even better. Property taxes provide a disincentive to making the land more productive. A land value tax would incentivize residential landowners to build more units which provides more supply and would lower rents.
> disincentive to making the land more productive.
Isn't that like saying income tax disincentives people from making more money.
Re: High property taxes are good
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does tax policy need to directly influence the mix of 1bdr and 3bdr apartments? Renters who need 3bdr apartments have enormous influence over the market already.
If tax policy is not designed with these considerations in mind, then it will incentivize an improper mix and deteriorate the livability of the city. For instance, where I live the city core has been abandoned by families because no family-sized units have been built in something like 40 years. So families move out of the cities and then commute which causes all sorts of traffic problems, wastes their time in these c…
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Re: High property taxes are good
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does tax policy need to directly influence the mix of 1bdr and 3bdr apartments? Renters who need 3bdr apartments have enormous influence over the market already.
If tax policy is not designed with these considerations in mind, then it will incentivize an improper mix and deteriorate the livability of the city. For instance, where I live the city core has been abandoned by families because no family-sized units have been built in something like 40 years. So families move out of the cities and then commute which causes all sorts of traffic problems, wastes their time in these c…
Why is that necessarily the case? The market has much better information about the demand for 3bdr apartments than cities and counties do. Mostly we have the opposite problem: top-down policy from local governments impedes the construction of 3bdr apartments.
Re: High property taxes are good
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem (IMO) is that it's not so simple to value land. Where I live, being two blocks over can make a huge difference. It's easy to say "you paid $500k for your house, so we're gonna tax you on $500k". It's much harder to accurately say what someone would have paid for the land were it not developed. I understand the benefits of LVT, but how do you solve this? Are there any good examples of governments t…
Wikipedia has some examples of places where it is used: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
I looked there and a bunch of the examples show places where it used to be used (which is probably a good indication of how hard it is in practice). The rest have very vague details and none of the examples there really go into any depth on the details of how they value land in practice. So I'm wondering if anyone knows which country has a good model to look further into.
Re: High property taxes are good
#160What's the deal with Brock Whittaker's website at brooock.com, anyway? It only seems to have one page: http://brooock.com/a/property-taxes-are-good>. There's no home page, no list of other posts. Kinda disappointing, really, since I was curious to see what else this guy had to say.