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Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

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Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#51

Post by concinds »

tamimio wrote: post #49
concinds wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the money for local services supposed to come from? Why should you be allowed to monopolize a piece of finite and scarce resource, land, for free? Since you think it's a scam, surely you support 100% capital gains taxes on homes? Since old people getting rich off of an unproductive asset, blocking supply to "preserve neighborhood character", and inflating the price of their artificially-scarce goods would be…

The government already takes enough taxes. I am sure they can figure it out. In fact, you are already double taxed: once on income tax (which was temporary and only paid on corporate profits, not yours, but that's another story) and then taxed again on what was already taxed through GST, sales tax, VAT, you name it. >finite You think land is finite? You do realize you can fit the entire human race - both the ~8 billi…

> The government already takes enough taxes.

Is the deficit a scam too? It does not take enough taxes, you are heavily subsidized and want to be subsidized further.

The argument is simple. Land ownership with no property tax privatizes gains that others must subsidize. Land value comes from government infrastructure for water, electricity, roads, public transportation, which are expensive to maintain. That, and artificial scarcity, is why your house grows in value, which is why people treat it as an investment.

Japan fixed it by having a dying population, which causes other problems.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#52

Post by bilbo0s »

dfsnow wrote: post #42
shigawire wrote: post #26

I'll not dispute the impact on expansion and consolidation, but I will say in recent months I have seen a number of hit pieces on the 340B program, mostly bankrolled by pharma companies (not this one just calling out the trend). The exact implementation might be flawed, but if 340b is eliminated it will kill many hospitals in underserved communities. So any plan to change 340B should really also explain how to fund t…

Hi, I wrote this article and largely agree with you. 340B is important and without it many hospitals likely wouldn't survive. However, it's pretty evident at this point that 340B has expanded beyond its original intent. For example, Northwestern University (in the middle of downtown Chicago) got itself reclassified as a rural hospital in order to participate in the program. Moreover, it's grown extremely rapidly over…

For example, Northwestern University (in the middle of downtown Chicago) got itself reclassified as a rural hospital in order to participate in the program.

This is also a bit misleading though right? Northwestern was obliged to put 11 other hospitals and something on the order of like 150 to 200 clinic/other locations on its books largely for the purposes of access. So that rural communities across northern Illinois can also have the same access as people in Chicago.

The fact is, they are a rural healthcare system. Because the options that were in those locations previously were unable to make a long term go of it.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#53

Post by idiotsecant »

stephen_cagle wrote: post #13
idiotsecant wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reducing or removing property taxes for legitimate historic properties seems like a good thing to me. I don't want every community to look like a slightly randomized version of every other community. Historic stuff is interesting. If we can encourage it to stay interesting and not get torn down to build a TGI fridays that sounds like a good thing to me. How much did your crusade to tax local historic structures save…

Strong disagree. If something has value, then the community should decide to preserve it as a group or the state should preserve it for us. I suspect that most of these schemes are some form of tax avoidance for wealthier people. The idea that some politically connected and likely wealthy group of people need some sort of help "preserving" historic buildings seems... dubious.

What do you think the community deciding to preserve it looks like? The government is the community. It's made out of the community. It's elected by the community. What mechanism are you suggesting?

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#54

Post by idiotsecant »

jeffbee wrote: post #15
idiotsecant wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reducing or removing property taxes for legitimate historic properties seems like a good thing to me. I don't want every community to look like a slightly randomized version of every other community. Historic stuff is interesting. If we can encourage it to stay interesting and not get torn down to build a TGI fridays that sounds like a good thing to me. How much did your crusade to tax local historic structures save…

None of the covered properties in Berkeley are legitimate landmarks of genuine architectural merit or historical importance. Every one of them was established by flim-flam for the purpose of claiming the tax abatement. Over the years this lovely property claimed more tax breaks than any other. Judge for yourself whether the public interest was served. https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8567746,-122.2550107,3a,60y,...

Seems like the problem is that the system is bad at identifying historic properties with genuine value.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#55

Post by kiba »

GS523523 wrote: post #40
shimman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government already has and does do exactly this. Is this suppose to be a gotcha? If you have very valuable property, you should pay taxes on it. Claiming that you have ownership over land on this planet is odd, you didn't create the land and governments change overtime.

Property taxes are the most evil of taxes because they force you out onto the street if you're unable to pay them. Qualifying it with the words "very valuable" to solve the problem creates an arbitrary two-tier system that is inherently unfair. >Claiming that you have ownership over land on this planet is odd, you didn't create the land and governments change overtime. The government didn't create the land either.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Because it is politicaly unpalatable to tax landowners, we tax economic activity instead.

The result is that return on effort are reduced. That mean labor, entrepreneurs, and capital bear the burden of supporting government budgets as opposed to landowners who benefit from the economic activity making their land valuable.

Taxes as a rule discourages whatever get taxed. The exception to this is land, because land isn't created. It already exists in nature.

Don't tax what people make, tax what people took.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#56

Post by [deleted] »

kiba wrote: post #50
mothballed wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm more convinced that the LVT is the least invasive than it being the least bad in economic action, although I can somewhat understand the argument for it. If you eliminated all the other taxes and only used LVT then a large part of the financial surveillance apparatus wouldn't have a leg to stand on. The part about bean counting every bit of income, profit, and gain and then being made to report it to the governme…

It is the only tax without deadweight loss. Speculators are detrimental in this case because they make land more expensive without increasing supply and are loathe to make efficient use of the land.

[deleted]

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#57

Post by Hikikomori »

ars wrote: post #37
xnx wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. And then after many years, the appreciated land is sold for a profit.

A profit for who? It's a non-profit. If the sale netted extra money it goes back to the people who donated, or to another non-profit.

Pastor, I mean the church, needs a new Ferrari.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#58

Post by iugtmkbdfil834 »

estearum wrote: post #36
iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically speaking, I am not sure if humans argued that they have created the land and therefore they should be allowed to use it. Ownership of the land and its use is, rather, simply tied to one's ability to retain it ( possession being 9/10ths of the law and all that ).

Yes, you are correctly identifying that all land rights stem from one's ability to claim nature's productive power as his own and monopolize all output from it. This was self-evident in the feudal era, when landlords (Lords) had to at least raise their own militaries to assert this monopoly right. But the modern State and the landlords reached a compromise: the State will provide security to protect the lords' monopo…

It may be absurd, but do you have a workable framework that can replace it? If not, it makes zero to no difference whether it is absurd or not. It works for the society in place.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#59

Post by estearum »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #58
estearum wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are correctly identifying that all land rights stem from one's ability to claim nature's productive power as his own and monopolize all output from it. This was self-evident in the feudal era, when landlords (Lords) had to at least raise their own militaries to assert this monopoly right. But the modern State and the landlords reached a compromise: the State will provide security to protect the lords' monopo…

It may be absurd, but do you have a workable framework that can replace it? If not, it makes zero to no difference whether it is absurd or not. It works for the society in place.

Yes. A high land value tax prevents the capture of unearned wealth by owners of land without introducing market inefficiencies or price distortions.

The current arrangement demonstrably does not work for society in place, and as AI (whether in this wave of innovation or the next) increases productivity further, it will work less and less by virtue of further increasing land rents, thereby pricing out larger and larger swaths of society from a place to live, work, or otherwise exist.

Re: Property taxes going up? The 340B Program might be partly responsible

#60

Post by dfsnow »

bilbo0s wrote: post #52
dfsnow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I wrote this article and largely agree with you. 340B is important and without it many hospitals likely wouldn't survive. However, it's pretty evident at this point that 340B has expanded beyond its original intent. For example, Northwestern University (in the middle of downtown Chicago) got itself reclassified as a rural hospital in order to participate in the program. Moreover, it's grown extremely rapidly over…

For example, Northwestern University (in the middle of downtown Chicago) got itself reclassified as a rural hospital in order to participate in the program. This is also a bit misleading though right? Northwestern was obliged to put 11 other hospitals and something on the order of like 150 to 200 clinic/other locations on its books largely for the purposes of access. So that rural communities across northern Illinois…

I was being a bit glib/imprecise before, but I'm specifically talking about the Northwestern Memorial campus downtown Chicago [0]. That location qualifies for 340B as a Rural Referral Center (RRC), and got itself reclassified by CMS/HRSA as rural to do so, despite being in the middle of downtown. RRCs need to meet a lower threshold of Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) adjustment percentage (8% vs the usual 11.75%). Northwestern Memorial needs to be an RRC because it doesn't meet the higher DSH threshold.

AFAIK, the other hospitals/clinics under the Northwestern umbrella don't really factor into whether the downtown Northwestern Memorial campus qualifies for 340B (insofar as they all have their own CCNs and qualify independently). In this case, Northwestern Memorial qualifies because it a) got reclassified as rural b) became an RRC (likely based on its staff specialty mix) c) meets the RRC DSH threshold of >= 8%.

Northwestern Memorial does treat a lot of rural patients, so maybe it does deserve 340B. That said, it seems clear that it's not they type of struggling safety-net/rural hospital 340B was originally intended to subsidize.

[0] https://340bopais.hrsa.gov/CeDetails/78783

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