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New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

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Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#81
post #50
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"seeing the ultra rich paying far less taxes then they are." Is this actually true? I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes.

Last year year Jeff bezos and I both paid taxes for the year of 2024. The percentage he paid on the money he made is far less than I did. I gave higher share of my income to the government than he did. Bezos's true tax rate was less than 1% and mine was around 25%. Link - https://itep.org/washington-post-rich-not-paying-fair-share/

IDK what Bezos made as "income" last year but paper gains in asset values are not "income" for tax purposes, though some people might look at the increase in his wealth and call that money he "made" that year. But we don't have a wealth tax on a federal level at least.

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#82
post #53
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the data for that? I was wondering about tax paid (as dollars not effective rate- I know effective tends to me lower for HNW individuals due to accountants and other financial professionals they can afford).

> I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes. If we're bringing receipts, how about you start? Do you have the data for this initial statement of yours?

Here is one source (with 2022 data):

https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/latest-federal-in...

  - The top 1% of income earners pay 40.4% of the total U.S. Federal Income Tax receipts
  - Top 5% pays 61.0%
  - Top 10% pays 72.0%
  - Top 25% pays 87.2%
  - Top 50% pays 97.0%
...of course that doesn't include payroll taxes (Social Security).

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos pays 40% too. His assets are not income. Just like your assets are not taxed. Ok, but he does that loan-against-assets hack! Well the fact is that those loans eventually need to be paid, so at some point he will pay that 40% (unless he does the step-up basis hack when he dies) Ok, but he should be paying annually like everyone else! Well, technically he is, his assets, the company Amazon, pays a lot of taxes an…

> unless he does the step-up basis hack when he dies I'm sure we can count that as a given. > The government views Amazon as a money printer, states get their sales taxes, and the federal government gets their income taxes. Except when states fall all over themselves to give Amazon a massive tax break to build their second HQ.

>I'm sure we can count that as a given.

It's very unlikely, he has pledged to give away most of his wealth in his lifetime, but there are a variety of factors that will always add space for detractors to make fair points. Bill Gates is still worth billions despite being an endless waterfall of charity money for decades.

Either way, the step-up thing is way way way more common in the upper class, where people with ~$24M want their kids to get $6M each. These people are nobodies with no public image, and light years away from "Billionaire Class" status.

>Except when states fall all over themselves to give Amazon a massive tax break to build their second HQ.

All the employees will pay income tax, and they will mostly spend their money in the state, generating sales tax. Then there is the second order effect of businesses that pop-up to feed off the money that the employees make.

What's often missed, and never explained, is that the government loves businesses, because businesses convert people into tax revenue, on almost all levels. Don't miss that.

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top 10% is the upper middle class, not the ultra rich. A successful surgeon making $1M per year is paying well over 40% a year in taxes, while Bezos is paying 1%.

Bezos pays 40% too. His assets are not income. Just like your assets are not taxed. Ok, but he does that loan-against-assets hack! Well the fact is that those loans eventually need to be paid, so at some point he will pay that 40% (unless he does the step-up basis hack when he dies) Ok, but he should be paying annually like everyone else! Well, technically he is, his assets, the company Amazon, pays a lot of taxes an…

[flagged]

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#85
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, when I think of a place that has an overabundance of 2 floor single family homes, I think of Manhattan.

Do you live here? I do, and I’m astounded by the number of 1- to 3-story buildings and surface parking lots (!) dotted throughout Manhattan, especially outside of the skyscraper clusters in midtown and downtown. There is an unbelievable shortage of housing that is solvable only by increasing supply and building upwards. It’s not even single-family homes; why are there any one-story buildings in the lower east side?

It's really shocking how much underutilized space there is in Manhattan and near Brooklyn/Queens.

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#86
post #32
post #7

> an initiative to appease Mayor Zohran Mamdani and liberal voters Taxing the rich is not a Liberal thing, but the Rich is calling it that because they do not want to pay any taxes at all. He was elected because people are starting to feel real pain and seeing the ultra rich paying far less taxes then they are. If it was up to me, I would tax all the second homes above 5 million USD and add a Luxury Tax on all valuab…

"seeing the ultra rich paying far less taxes then they are." Is this actually true? I thought looking at the aggregates that the top 10% pay something like 1/3rd of all income/cap gain taxes.

[deleted]

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#87

Reactionary taxes like this have a tendency to be ill-considered and have unintended side effects. NY also has a 1% penalty on paying more than $1 million for housing, which was probably enacted to proletariat applause when $1 million was still considered a lot of money. Now it distorts the value of entry level housing in NYC, where you'll have a hard time finding anything more than a studio apartment for $1 million.…

Golly gee willikers, not the spooky potential for possible side effects! Wouldn't want any of those when we could have gigantic sucker-punch scarcity-amid-plenty instead!

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#88
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bedrock is only a little lower in the "Midtown Gap", and in any case a lot of those 4 story buildings could be 8-10.

I'm guessing it would be tough to make the numbers work demolishing a 4-story building and building one that's only 2-2.5x the square footage, especially with today's interest rates.

That's pretty hard to say in a blanket way, I wouldn't want to speculate. But there's never a bad time to fix zoning.

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#89
post #51

Reactionary taxes like this have a tendency to be ill-considered and have unintended side effects. NY also has a 1% penalty on paying more than $1 million for housing, which was probably enacted to proletariat applause when $1 million was still considered a lot of money. Now it distorts the value of entry level housing in NYC, where you'll have a hard time finding anything more than a studio apartment for $1 million.…

Gosh, 1% on $1m, that's almost $10k! I can see that how would discourage homeownership and distort the market. Actually wait, I can't.

You're comparing the wrong numbers. The question is what 1% of the purchase price does to the amount you need for your down payment and fees. On a 10% down payment an extra 1% increases the amount you need by 10%. Remember that while a million dollar home sounds extravagant, it's first time buyers who often have just barely enough who are trying to buy these.

Re: New York to tax luxury second homes in NYC

#90
post #26

I dunno why anyone thinks this matters. https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/the-pied-a-terre-tax-and... "We find that, before adjusting for these factors, our choice of tax rates and brackets could raise almost exactly $500 million from a little over 11,200 properties. However, revenues could be reduced to between roughly $340 million and $380 million based on assumptions on exclusions for rented units and behavioral…

So it'll still raise at least 300 million? Sounds like a great thing to me. I dunno why you think it doesn't matter.

Unlocking extra housing is the real boon, the tax revenue is the bonus.
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