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

pricepoints.health

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

#71

Post by estearum »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #68
estearum wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you arguing here? It seems like you're arguing that the people who own high value land should pay higher taxes than those who don't. I agree!

I think that what I am saying is that, in practice, the well-intended solutions like the one that was listed above are effectively nullified as they do not seem to anticipate real world human reactions. What ends up happening is that it is only a subset of the people, who own land that pay higher taxes. The solution is to remove any and all subsidies. Governments of all levels have not exactly proven to be a reliable…

Well it's pretty easy to have a useless conversation if you're going to act as if the words your interlocutor are saying are "effectively nullified."

My solution does anticipate real-world human interactions: don't give rich landowners tax breaks. This is baked into the premise of having a high tax. A tax that is effectively not-high is by definition not a high tax, ergo is not the solution I am proposing. If I proposed a solution of "have a tax that is claimed to be high but actually is not," then your response would be valid. But my solution was: have a high land value tax.

Your solution is dismissible by your same logic. "While removing any and all subsidies is well-intended, in practice real-world human interactions dictate that will not occur."

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

#72

Post by tstrimple »

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.

The Mormon church has nearly $300 billion dollars in assets, mostly land. "Non-profit" indeed.

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

#73

Post by bickfordb »

ars wrote: post #35
bickfordb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my metro area it irks me to see the churches with large empty parking lots empty most of the week. We have a housing shortage and they seem to have no little incentive to convert their parking to more productive use. I agree, the whole ruse that these 501s meaningfully does charitable work for our communities is laughable and their tax exemption should be revoked, at least with regard to land taxes.

There are almost no places where a housing shortage is due to a lack of land. Housing shortages have all sorts of reasons, from constructions cost, to zoning, to restrictions on what can be built, but it's virtually never a lack of land. And parking is a productive use - they have services once a week, and parking means people can come to the service. That's the definition of productive use. Something does not need t…

Church goers using parking lots like this is a use, but I doubt it's a productive charitable use that should to be subsidized by localities.

Every other contemporary development in my area that faces real economic reality is ground floor retail, commercial/residential on top, and optionally underground parking.

There are certainly productive religious charitable efforts using facilities like this: homeless shelters, community low-cost/free clinics, soup kitchens. I think these uses should be tax subsidized, but other mystical efforts should not be whether they generate a profit or not.

I think a good reform to the 501c3 system would be to make non-profits like these churches and hospitals classify their actual charitable activity and separate it from their other activity, just like individuals with a mix of personal/small business income/expenses are required to do.

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

#74

Post by wakawaka28 »

bastawhiz wrote: post #69
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…

It's incredible how far we'll bend over backwards as a country to avoid single payer healthcare. It's especially ironic that the most common argument against it is "taxes" when ...the outcome here is higher taxes.

Single payer would reduce choice and increase costs. People fantasize that price caps would fix everything, but they can't. Healthcare is just a resource and people pay high prices for it due to limited availability and regulatory requirements.

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

#75

Post by xnx »

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…

> it will kill many hospitals in underserved communities.

At some point it makes more sense to move every person from their remote hamlet than to create a hundreds different programs and exceptions to deliver broadband, groceries, and healthcare there. Many of these towns are leftover from when farming was 100x more labor intensive or industry had to be located next to a river.

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

#76

Post by magnaton »

xnx wrote: post #20

We need a prominent [even more] obvious scam "church" to abuse the system so badly that the exemption is eliminated for all.

Scientology (a family-destroying cult that brutally harassed the IRS into granting it recognition as a religion) is the perfect example, funneling huge sums into buying up real estate that then sits empty and generates no tax revenue. The center of Clearwater, FL is close to being a ghost town because of this.

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

#77

Post by duxup »

Wouldn't any exception for any reason also fall into this argument?

Also the American healthcare system is such a kludge of laws with mixed motivations and so on. At this point keeping local hospitals operating seems like a good goal considering the pressure on many of them. Rural areas have had hospitals vanishing for a while now, the outcome there is not good.

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

#79

Post by duxup »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #74
bastawhiz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredible how far we'll bend over backwards as a country to avoid single payer healthcare. It's especially ironic that the most common argument against it is "taxes" when ...the outcome here is higher taxes.

Single payer would reduce choice and increase costs. People fantasize that price caps would fix everything, but they can't. Healthcare is just a resource and people pay high prices for it due to limited availability and regulatory requirements.

Do we really know what single payer would do with any certainty?

There's not really been a real test what a healthcare system with any kind of "natural" market forces at work. The current system is just a mess of tax breaks, middle man companies, hidden pricing, strange federal and local laws, employer choices and so on...

Even when someone talks about single payer, I'm still unsure what they imagine that looks like.

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

#80

Post by jeffbee »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #65
jeffbee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that in Berkeley but usually the specifics of the deal they are taking about are incorrect, so I generally ignore such people. For example the properties owned by the U.C. wealth fund are taxed like any other.

It does kind of suck for Albany though that something like 10% of its population lives in the untaxable University Village.

Let's be real. Albany could double its tax base with duplexes, or any buildings taller than 10 feet, but they don't and don't want to.
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