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Or maybe instead of based on market price, make the property taxes based on the size / features of the house ?
by thatfrenchguy 8y ago
Or maybe instead of based on market price, make the property taxes based on the size / features of the house ?
- thaumasiotes 8y agoThat has good and bad points. Two really obvious ones: - A flat tax defined by features would erode away with inflation, unlike a tax on market price. - Feature taxes seriously affect the features that houses express. The English window tax raised money and suppressed windows, with noticeable health effects on the people who got to live in darkened houses.
- boulos 8y agoThis ends up being easily gamed. If you tax based on “rooms”, you end up with gigantic open floor plans (single room). If you tax on square footage, you find a way to count it as mostly outside / lawn area. Market value is the closest thing to “you can afford it”.
- ScottBurson 8y agoYou're headed in the wrong direction. The better way is to tax only the value of the land: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax