Indeed. Nothing about this addresses rental markets and general extreme cost of living. Rather, it finds new ways to prop up severely overvalued housing markets.
Housing costs are so high because it’s become an investment over a necessary place for a human to live. A correction is severely needed and long overdue, but the government works hard to keep values artificially high from zoning laws at the bottom to preventing corrections at the top.
That and most people just do the standard deductions.
So tax breaks mostly help the wealthy in mansions.
It’s like how conservatives want to move income tax to sales tax. The wealthiest make a lot more than they spend. And when they spend it’s usually thru some shady shit where they don’t pay sales tax. Like claiming seven figure personal vehicles as a “company car” from a company they own.
At the very least, they should raise real estate taxes on empty units. This will penalize people for owning several vacation homes, as well as incentivize landlords to lower rates in order to fill the unit.
Difficult to enforce, but send a few people to jail for real estate tax fraud and the rest will fall in line.
Not really, because the rental market does not behave like commodities do. Generally, you have to live within a reasonable distance of employment. For this and other reasons, renters are much more vulnerable and tend to get exploited far beyond the cost of the service.
Basically, if tenants had any more money to exploit, they would already take it. Rents are maximally high wherever possible to extract maximum money from people who need a place to live.
Consider the common joke that I pay this much in rent every month but the bank says I can’t afford a house where the mortgage would be substantially less.
Agreed, and this would be solved by sufficiently high land value tax - if wasn’t profitable to be a landlord nobody would do it and the price of land would decline sharply. Henry George saw all of this coming a long time ago.
That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
They could try to pass it on to consumers, but smaller landlords wouldn’t have to pay it.
That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
That might not have been clear.
Set it at the parent company level so it’s not easy.
If they have X amount invested in rental real estate, that can just be taxed then
Believe me, the tax code for the wealthy is already complicated, they can handle this
There’s always talk about tax breaks for home owners…
Never talks of raising taxes on landlords and empty units tho.
That’s what would fix it. Tax them out of the housing market slowly and.prices will go down as they get out of the business.
Indeed. Nothing about this addresses rental markets and general extreme cost of living. Rather, it finds new ways to prop up severely overvalued housing markets.
Housing costs are so high because it’s become an investment over a necessary place for a human to live. A correction is severely needed and long overdue, but the government works hard to keep values artificially high from zoning laws at the bottom to preventing corrections at the top.
That and most people just do the standard deductions.
So tax breaks mostly help the wealthy in mansions.
It’s like how conservatives want to move income tax to sales tax. The wealthiest make a lot more than they spend. And when they spend it’s usually thru some shady shit where they don’t pay sales tax. Like claiming seven figure personal vehicles as a “company car” from a company they own.
It’s way of dressing up expenses to fit our criminally low corporate tax structure.
It’s a special kind of fucked up that the government is paid for by the poor to serve the interests of the wealthy.
Is not that the standard tho?
At the very least, they should raise real estate taxes on empty units. This will penalize people for owning several vacation homes, as well as incentivize landlords to lower rates in order to fill the unit.
Difficult to enforce, but send a few people to jail for real estate tax fraud and the rest will fall in line.
Wouldn’t a tax hike only get passed through to the renter?
Not really, because the rental market does not behave like commodities do. Generally, you have to live within a reasonable distance of employment. For this and other reasons, renters are much more vulnerable and tend to get exploited far beyond the cost of the service.
Basically, if tenants had any more money to exploit, they would already take it. Rents are maximally high wherever possible to extract maximum money from people who need a place to live.
Consider the common joke that I pay this much in rent every month but the bank says I can’t afford a house where the mortgage would be substantially less.
Agreed, and this would be solved by sufficiently high land value tax - if wasn’t profitable to be a landlord nobody would do it and the price of land would decline sharply. Henry George saw all of this coming a long time ago.
That’s why you set it exponentially based on units owned by parent company, maybe break it down as a tax paid by shareholders for huge corporations landlords.
They could try to pass it on to consumers, but smaller landlords wouldn’t have to pay it.
Making the biggest get out of the game first
They will just split the units owned on more companies then.
That might not have been clear.
Set it at the parent company level so it’s not easy.
If they have X amount invested in rental real estate, that can just be taxed then
Believe me, the tax code for the wealthy is already complicated, they can handle this
Canada passed this law in 2022 addressing that:
Underused Housing Tax
Need a Land value tax and the ability to build medium/high density housing.