3 ms·

What property tax breaks are you talking about?

by whall6 5y ago

emodendroket 5y ago
> Bradford brought a vacancy tax to the council in early 2020. Similar measures were put forward at roughly the same time in other areas, including New York, Boston, and Montreal. But many of these efforts are on hold while cities grapple with the impact of the pandemic on their budgets. A vacancy tax sounds like an easy balm to the problem of chronically vacant storefronts, but counterintuitively, cities have instead often given tax rebates to the owners of vacant property. Until recently, Ontario mandated a flat 30 percent tax break to owners whose buildings had been empty for at least ninety days, with no maximum time limit. It was a measure born of the ’90s recession, intended to help ease the effects of economic downturn and falling property values. > While vacancy rebates provided some businesses with a needed reprieve in fiscally difficult times, they were criticized for, in Bradford’s words, “incentivizing owners to keep stores empty while they waited for values to get high enough for redevelopment.” A review ordered by the Ministry of Finance showed that the policy had exacerbated the issue of “chronically vacant” street-level commercial real estate. A well-meaning initiative to help struggling property owners had been thoroughly negated through exploitation and speculation.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  What is the public good here? I'd imagine: having shops, instead of vacant properties. And extending to residential: having more housing supply. So we want to (1) incentivize landlords to put their property to use, instead of letting it lay vacant & (2) avoid making property owning so risky that no one wants to do it. It seems like a non-use tax + national economic hardship exception takes care of that nicely. Taxes on your limited-supply property (e.g. city cores) increase at 30/60/90/180/360 days of vacancy. Where vacancy is defined on average across a timespan (to prevent resetting timers with faux leases). And then coupled to an external index (e.g. national occupancy rates for property type) that decreases the increased tax if there's a deteriorating economic period. We want it to be financially painful to not have a tenant in your property. To the extent that landlords are incentivized to go to the trouble to offer their property to the public for use.

What property tax breaks are you talking about?

by whall6 5y ago

What property tax breaks are you talking about?

> Bradford brought a vacancy tax to the council in early 2020. Similar measures were put forward at roughly the same time in other areas, including New York, Boston, and Montreal. But many of these efforts are on hold while cities grapple with the impact of the pandemic on their budgets. A vacancy tax sounds like an easy balm to the problem of chronically vacant storefronts, but counterintuitively, cities have instead often given tax rebates to the owners of vacant property. Until recently, Ontario mandated a flat 30 percent tax break to owners whose buildings had been empty for at least ninety days, with no maximum time limit. It was a measure born of the ’90s recession, intended to help ease the effects of economic downturn and falling property values. > While vacancy rebates provided some businesses with a needed reprieve in fiscally difficult times, they were criticized for, in Bradford’s words, “incentivizing owners to keep stores empty while they waited for values to get high enough for redevelopment.” A review ordered by the Ministry of Finance showed that the policy had exacerbated the issue of “chronically vacant” street-level commercial real estate. A well-meaning initiative to help struggling property owners had been thoroughly negated through exploitation and speculation.

ethbr0 5y ago
What is the public good here? I'd imagine: having shops, instead of vacant properties. And extending to residential: having more housing supply. So we want to (1) incentivize landlords to put their property to use, instead of letting it lay vacant & (2) avoid making property owning so risky that no one wants to do it. It seems like a non-use tax + national economic hardship exception takes care of that nicely. Taxes on your limited-supply property (e.g. city cores) increase at 30/60/90/180/360 days of vacancy. Where vacancy is defined on average across a timespan (to prevent resetting timers with faux leases). And then coupled to an external index (e.g. national occupancy rates for property type) that decreases the increased tax if there's a deteriorating economic period. We want it to be financially painful to not have a tenant in your property. To the extent that landlords are incentivized to go to the trouble to offer their property to the public for use.