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High property taxes are good

brooock.com

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Re: High property taxes are good

#471

Post by jelliclesfarm »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #327
bko wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds awful. Imagine being forced to move every few years or giving people with money that much power over you. Seems crazy that this idea is so popular. I'm guessing the people who like this idea are very young and mobile. Imagine telling grandma she has to move and sell her house and have police show up at the door when she doesn't want to. It's basically the abuses of eminent domain except done privately.

What makes you think this idea is popular? I don't even think the author is fully behind it, seemed more like a thought experiment as a reply to grandparent. Regarding grandma: I don't want to kick her out of the house. But there is a real issue here: young families can't find affordable places, while old families live in places, that are too big for them because the kids left. If they rent, they also pay significant…

Multigenerational families are the answer. Move in with grandma. Problem solved.

Re: High property taxes are good

#472

Post by imtringued »

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #408

I have generally found it to be true that only those who don’t pay property taxes..that is, those who don’t own property by virtue of paying for it and/or have inherited property..are usually the ones who clamour to increase property taxes as a punitive measure. In other words, the assetless classes support taxing those with earned fixed assets. When reframed this way, the article reads to me as a high falutin petty…

No it wouldn't. You would still end up with inequality and sprawl.

Re: High property taxes are good

#473

Post by EddieDante »

brockwhittaker wrote: post #291
EddieDante wrote: post #160

What'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.

sorry I just made this site this morning to post this article. it's just a simple node-http server! I don't write much :)

New, huh? Was't this yours, too?

https://web.archive.org/web/20200822170417/https://brooock.c...

Re: High property taxes are good

#474

Post by Clubber »

raymondh wrote: post #467

My experience of high property taxes is that it no longer feels like you own a home. You pay rent on it forever. At any time the rent can rise to more than you can afford. I own my home outright but likely won't be able to stay when I retire.

Agree. This seems like a trick to keep people working forever. I think homesteads should be tax free and just second or speculative homes.

Re: High property taxes are good

#475

Post by jfim »

CorpOverreach wrote: post #461
jfim wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can afford high property taxes. Your elderly parents might not be able to. Texas has an interesting solution to this. Homeowners over 65 can elect to defer the payment of their property taxes indefinitely, although the taxes eventually get paid when the house changes owners.

So it's basically taking an interest-free home equity loan against the property, in a round-about way? You're basically de-valuing the property since whoever buys it next will have to pay a lump sum in taxes to take ownership. I guess that doesn't matter to you if you're dead. What happens if the deferred taxes exceed the cost of the house?

The estate has to pay the taxes, so they can pay the taxes and keep the property, or sell it and pay the taxes using the proceeds. I believe that interest also accrues during the deferral.

I'm not sure what happens in the case where the accrued taxes exceed the value of the house, though.

Re: High property taxes are good

#476

Post by imtringued »

cableshaft wrote: post #208
igorkraw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. I know where my priorities would be. Or we could of course try to remove the cruelty completely by not using a market system to manage a natural monopoly (space in a community). But if you choose cruelty, at least be cruel to those that can choose to suffer as opposed that cannot really escape

> I mean, either you are cruel to home owners who have capital or you are cruel to poor people. False equivalence. There's no reason you have to be cruel to either. You can always build more housing or provide financial services to help poorer people buy homes. Or just, you know, lower the cost of homes so property taxes don't have to be astronomical and force older people out of their homes to begin with. If housing…

>You can always build more housing or provide financial services to help poorer people buy homes.

At the edge of town? Why shouldn't we build more housing in the city center?

Re: High property taxes are good

#477

Post by raldi »

lolinder wrote: post #380
at_compile_time wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poor widow argument against land value taxes has been a mainstay of the landowning class for over a century. [Winston Churchill had had enough of it back in 1909.]( https://web.archive.org/web/20010728120002/http://home.vicne... ) Guaranteeing that people can take up the same space that they did when the population was half its current level is a great way to ensure that future generations have nowhere to live.

The person you're replying to isn't arguing against land value taxes in the abstract, they're arguing against an implementation of LVTs that would force most homeowners to decide between overpaying taxes by a wide margin or suddenly losing their home.

Perhaps I'm not stating the proposal clearly. Nobody would suddenly lose their home. If you understated its value, and someone made an offer, you'd have the opportunity to restate the property's value, keep the home, and pay the appropriate property taxes from then on.

Re: High property taxes are good

#478

Post by frosted-flakes »

giaour wrote: post #404
tesseract wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And so there is a way to get a reasonable approximation of land value: Subtract the insured value of the improvements (which should be accurate by virtue of being determined by a profitable insurance company in a competitive market) from the appraised property value (which there are generally accepted methods for figuring).

Sort of, but that would give you the "social value" of the land, which it only has because of its present use and its proximity to other land used for specific purposes. E.g., the land under my house is worth $X because it's in a residential area in a major metropolitan area. If I were to build a dense mixed use complex on a large plot of land, I would probably increase the land value (since density would make it a d…

LVT is based on location, not farming potential.

Re: High property taxes are good

#479

Post by Supermancho »

imtringued wrote: post #430
Supermancho wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are seniors magically allowed to be immune to basic market forces when no one else is? Because they have fixed incomes (generally). This income is immune to market forces. That's why. While many elderly invested wisely (and at the right time) to become wealthy, especially when leveraging dips (like during the 80s), it doesn't change the average case. Living month to month on a fixed income is the norm after ret…

Fixed incomes while complaining that their land is going up in value which lead to high property taxes? That kind of thing?

This was an argument for prop 13. The GP seemed to be puzzled about the reasoning, when it was sold to voters on this simple premise.

Re: High property taxes are good

#480

Post by imtringued »

dmfdmf wrote: post #97

Property taxes are unconstitutional and immoral. They are an implicit nationalization of all property because there is no way to own property unencumbered. Implicitly the govt owns all the land and charges you rent. The level, high or low, is irrelevant to the principle.

That argument is easily debunked by introducing a citizen's dividend.

With a citizen's dividend the opposite is true, private land ownership is forcing people into homelessness and taking away their contributions to their local community.

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