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High property taxes are good

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Re: High property taxes are good

#181

Post by yucky »

zip1234 wrote: post #79
xhxhsjjsjsnz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just empty fields. It’s also empty buildings. A grocery store sized unit sat vacant in my San Francisco neighborhood for over a decade. Cheap property tax due to Prop 13. Owners wanted to wait for the “right offer” to develop it.

Many of the abandoned houses in Detroit are owned by speculators who will do nothing with it but wait for land prices to increase.

Many of the houses abandoned in Detroit were abandoned (and often torched) due to the ridiculously high property taxes and lack of value returned by the city for those taxes.

It's hard to justify telling land owners to pay high property taxes when the city delivered the highest crime rates and worst performing schools in the nation in exchange for those tax dollars.

Re: High property taxes are good

#182

Post by Johnny555 »

kashkhan wrote: post #128
Johnny555 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USA has about 2.5 billion acres I don't see how that's relevant, not all land is equally well suited for housing, especially among the elderly who are likely to need some sort of living assistance and regular access to healthcare. property taxes are terrible for old people. you should be able to buy a reasonable amount of land tax free. I think something like California's Prop 13 that puts a cap on property tax incre…

land use must be fair. You should tax excessive ownership of land. Most old do not live in assisted care. ANd healthcare is independent of land ownership. CA is extremely screwed up on how it taxes. I used to live in Cupertino where some people were paying taxes on 2 million dollar lots valued at 100k.

Land is not equally valuable so you can't look at the total land area of the USA and declare that everyone should be entitled to one tax free plot of land, land in the middle of Manhattan has a different value than land in the middle of a mountain range that's covered in 20 feet of snow half the year and is only accessible by helicopter.

Most old do not live in assisted care. And healthcare is independent of land ownership.

I didn't say "assisted care" my father lived almost his entire life on his own, but still had assistance from his children and occasionally a home healthcare worker - this is a lot harder to do if his allocated tax-free plot of land is 100 miles from family or healthcare services. Healthcare is independent of land ownership, but isn't independent of location - after one medication change, he had to go back to the doctor daily for monitoring for a couple weeks, then weekly after that for 6 months. How would he do that it it was a 4 hour round trip to the nearest healthcare facility?

Re: High property taxes are good

#183

Post by ahallock »

Not if you're retired on fixed income. My parents' property taxes kept going up year after year in upstate NY -- one of the deciding factors when they moved. It's a shame because my dad put so much into that property.

Re: High property taxes are good

#185

Post by gnicholas »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #91
spicymaki wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is local democracy in action. Vested landowners can put up barriers to entry to prop up their investments. They can also hand it down to their family, entrenching wealth for generations. Sucks to be an outsider.

"They can also hand it down to their family, entrenching wealth for generations." Not any more.

I think this new rule only applies to property that is inherited and not lived in by the inheritor (e.g., rental property or vacation home). If you inherit a home and live in it, I think you can still keep the old property tax basis. There may be some dollar value limitations or other rules I’m not remembering though.

EDIT: just checked, the property value can go up by $1M from when it was purchased without the inheritor owing additional tax. [1] Beyond that, tax is due on the incremental additional appreciation. In reality, this will only affect properties in a few metro areas (Bay Area, LA, OC, SD) and certain beachside properties. This isn't to say that the law is good or bad, just to describe the scope of its likely impact.

1: https://www.cunninghamlegal.com/california-legal-services/ca...

Re: High property taxes are good

#186

Post by commandlinefan »

hedora wrote: post #18

The article overlooks one important factor: Raising property taxes would lower house values, reducing loan sizes, and therefore bank profits. We can't have that money being squandered on social services or infrastructure.

How would raising property taxes lower house values?

Re: High property taxes are good

#187

Post by TimPC »

hammock wrote: post #174
bbatha wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of California "you paid $500k for your house, so we're gonna tax you on $500k" is not how property taxes work. The town/city/county typically does property assessments on regular basis (usually annually). These are based on doing comparisons with like houses in your neighborhood and are equal prone to "2 blocks over is way more desirable".

Difference without a meaningful distinction. Houses are bought on credit, that credit isn’t approved without an appraisal that supports the price being paid, and that appraisal is done using comps similar to a tax assessment.

My city assesses land and structure value separately as part of property taxes so having them assess just land instead seems like less work not more.

Re: High property taxes are good

#188

Post by medvezhenok »

scifibestfi wrote: post #121
vanilla_nut wrote: post #2

In my region of northern New Hampshire, there are a lot of retired folks with houses rising from $200k-ish values to closer to $500k-ish values in the last 5-10 years. As such, there's a lot of discussion around lowering property taxes to help these retirees. In my opinion? Fuck 'em. Property taxes are a brilliant method of perfectly progressive taxation: you can always choose to live in a cheaper home. If your home…

Yeesh, lack of empathy much? Imagine you bought a house and worked diligently for 30 years to pay it off. Now in retirement your cost of living skyrockets, through no fault of your own, such that you can no longer afford to live there in your 70s and 80s. How is that in any way fair or just?

Now imagine the same exact thing but instead of buying a house, the person rented for 30 years (probably would have been forced out of the neighborhood much sooner). Are you still empathizing?

What about the people who couldn't get a loan in the 1940s-70s because of redlining and ended up having to rent for the same amount of time?

All of this "empathy" talk hides real wealth redistribution towards property owners. Just holding on to a piece of property should not increase your share of real productive capital disproportionately.

Re: High property taxes are good

#189

Post by ahallock »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #2

In my region of northern New Hampshire, there are a lot of retired folks with houses rising from $200k-ish values to closer to $500k-ish values in the last 5-10 years. As such, there's a lot of discussion around lowering property taxes to help these retirees. In my opinion? Fuck 'em. Property taxes are a brilliant method of perfectly progressive taxation: you can always choose to live in a cheaper home. If your home…

That's a very callous attitude, especially for people who have put a lot into their property. Being forced out due to taxation is no choice at all.

Re: High property taxes are good

#190

Post by newaccount2021 »

firloop wrote: post #166

This article doesn't provide any reasons why a property owner should want lower property taxes; why would you want to constrain prices and prevent speculation? I don't own any property myself and am sympathetic to the idea of raising property tax, but many arguments for LVT/raising property taxes don't paint a convincing argument for why property owners should vote against their self interests.

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