When old retired people are able to hold on to houses they shouldn’t be able to afford, it lowers the supply of housing in the area, which likely has higher house values because it’s an area with jobs, attracting young working people. San Francisco, Seattle, Cincinnati, Austin, hell practically every mid to large city. Lower supply = higher prices. In addition, old homeowners paying lower taxes means a greater tax burden on new homeowners, again meaning higher prices.
The math is inescapable, and no emotional screeching will change that truth. You may not LIKE it, it may not give you the warm fuzzies, but that does not mean it’s wrong. Don’t call your emotional response “fact”. It’s wrong.
I’m not advocating for exceptions for the elderly.
Prop 13 and its variants are absolutely an exception for the elderly. And their heirs, which is just blatant bullshit, but that’s a whole other conversation.
When property values go up, taxes should go up proportionally. If a proportional tax increase means you can’t afford your home anymore, then you can’t afford your home anymore.
You expressly avoided quoting my actual proposal, no taxes on a primary residence of a reasonable value in relation to state home values. That’s not saying people shouldn’t pay taxes.
That IS saying people shouldn’t pay taxes. Unless you disagree with the entire concept of taxing wealth. A home’s value is wealth. You may not want to think of it that way but it’s worth money the same way a stock portfolio is worth money. The same way a yacht is worth money. If you believe those assets should be taxed, then a home should be taxed. And I do believe that wealth should be taxed entirely separately from and irrespective of income. The tax RATE should obviously be progressive and not a flat tax. But no blanket exemption, especially not for poor pitiful millionaires, whatever their social security check dollar amount is.
AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Only because you want to tax them while letting them live on a poverty income. I might see your point if Social Security payouts were substantially increased, but they aren’t, and you aren’t proposing that we change that, either.
Once again, you completely ignore that under my proposal, those young people wouldn’t be paying the property taxes, either. So this is a completely irrelevant point to what I’m proposing.
Now try applying this to rent seeking scalpers, too, not just people trying to live in the homes they bought with their own hard work. How’s it impact the housing market when the guy buying up homes doesn’t even want to live in them? You think maybe a little more heavily than someone just trying to not be homeless?
That’s a really fucking bold claim to make when you’re the one who hasn’t done any math here and completely fucking ignored my math. I at least actually did my own research and math on tax rates and Social Security to make an informed conclusion that they are NOT all millionaires. You just keep screeching about irrelevant millionaires even when I already said multiple times that exorbitantly valued homes shouldn’t be tax exempt.
Yeah, you’re 100% right, it is a whole other conversation, one I’m not part of. I haven’t mentioned Prop 13 once, nor did I even know what it was. And at a glance now that I’m aware, it’s not what I’m fucking advocating for. You wanna try actually addressing the points I’m making instead of just ranting at me about whatever pissed you off?
That sure is a blind logical leap you’re making there. Especially when I already agreed to property taxes on high value homes, multiple times. I SPECIFICALLY said no property taxes on homes of a reasonable value, as defined by semi-local values. I say semi-local because living in a particularly town or area shouldn’t exclude you from taxes just because your neighbors are rich, too, but I’d be willing to make some locality concessions because of how home values vary by region, probably averaging out to at least some extent with the whole state. Hell, you could also do it as a sort of minimum threshold like we do with tax brackets. Properties valued under $XXX,000 get no tax with XXX dependent on region, anything above that pays full taxes on the value above that threshold, double taxes on value above a secondary threshold, and double it with no minimum threshold if it’s not your primary residence.
Ah, yes, because a home providing shelter in line with local averages and basic human needs is definitely the same thing as a luxury item that serves no true need in life. Because we should tax luxury yachts, we should also tax basic necessities like homes? That’s the clownest of clown takes.
I think we agree here but disagree on implementation. Personally, I see a wealth tax as a means to prevent wealth consolidation at the top, so I do not see it as reasonable to apply to someone who simply owns their home and has a respectable retirement fund because that’s not making a significant contribution to wealth consolidation. I would obviously include an exemption for a primary residence of reasonable value. Extra emphasis on “of reasonable value”, because you seem to need a little assistance with your reading comprehension since you’ve ignored it literally every single time I’ve said it, which has been many times at this point. I’d probably set the minimum threshold for a wealth tax substantially higher than you, though. Norway, for example, taxes wealth above ~$110k USD, I think it is, and they only consider 1/4 of the value of the home. This may sound like a reasonable starting point until you realize the average home price is around $500k, which means you’re already often looking at taxes on an average home. At a first guess with minimal research behind it, I’d say the threshold should probably be 2x-4x as high and with a bigger carve out for homes, again only if they’re reasonably valued. I don’t think you should start getting hit with a wealth tax the instant you actually start getting ahead.
And at the risk of wasting my time by typing out only to have it ignored yet again, I’m going to reiterate that I’m NOT SAYING THEY SHOULDN’T BE PAYING TAXES. People should generally pay taxes. I just don’t think we should be levying taxes on basic human necessities, and even states with a sales tax often acknowledge that to some extent by making basic food items tax exempt. A wealth tax with reasonable exceptions for things like reasonably valued homes and a large savings that still don’t make them rich are fine. Income taxes are fine and should be higher at the higher end of the brackets, probably with another new bracket or two on top.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Ok fine I’ll address some of the things I’ve been ignoring.
Because the entire housing market is unreasonable in almost every city in the Western world. It’s not just a few outliers here and there that can be compared to some average. The average itself is completely out of whack. We can’t just rein in the crazy part of the market; the whole market is crazy. Either we pick a semi-arbitrary value and tax above that (your plan) or we introduce a graduated, progressive tax on all homes (my plan). Introducing exemptions and especially benefit cliffs has historically always had crazy unforeseen negative consequences. A tax on all homes will by itself automatically bring the market closer to equilibrium.
The average home price in San Jose, CA is $1.4 million. That is crazytown. We can’t look at that as a benchmark to try and bring prices in line with.
Moreover, I would argue that anyone who owns a home at all is already of enough means that they don’t need tax breaks. Proportional to your equity obviously, someone who just closed on a house shouldn’t be slapped with a tax bill based on the whole value of that house. But we have a 0% income tax rate on the lowest incomes because that income is essential to living. Home ownership is not essential. Having shelter is essential, which is why I support taxpayer funded grants to homeless people etc, but home ownership is not and should not be a fundamental right. If you can afford to buy a house, you can afford to pay taxes.
Housing policy is already a big enough conversation. Incidentally, I actually support universal basic income, which you could look at as substantially higher social security payments.
But relevant to this conversation, social security in its current form is not a pension. If all you’re living on is social security, you probably can’t afford to retire. If you’re physically unable to work, then that’s disability. If you don’t have enough money saved up to pay for the life you want, but happen to be age 65, you’re not retired. You have to keep working.
Mathematically, it’s close enough to what you’re advocating for: a tax carve-out for homeowners, incidentally with the same tear-jerking “old people forced out of their homes by evil taxes” argument. It has the same supply-demand effects as well.
So, to summarize:
I’m ignoring your “reasonable price” point because it’s either arbitrary or unworkable
I’m ignoring social security because it’s not a retirement plan
I’m equating you with prop 13 because the socioeconomic effects are essentially the same
Instead I’m addressing the core of your point, which is that homeowners should not pay taxes on their home (within reason, mansions etc excluded). To which I say, “yes they should, all of em”. Again, if you have enough money to buy a house, you have enough money to pay taxes. If your house increases in value such that you can’t afford the taxes anymore, fucking congratulations, you just made a bunch of money. Now you get to experience the pain of renters being priced out of their own neighborhoods, but also with a small golden parachute to take with you. And it makes things less bad in general for everyone by helping to bring housing costs down across the board.
Also, just to keep this conversation in perspective, I don’t think this is the MAIN reason why housing is crazy in places that have similar tax carve-outs for homeowners. I actually think that’s zoning and local NIMBYism. But this definitely contributes a fair amount.