4 ms·
> Maybe one for young people too If we're concerned about fairness in the housing market, a special tax which only applies to young people isn't the policy I'd
by dane-pgp 5y ago
> Maybe one for young people too
If we're concerned about fairness in the housing market, a special tax which only applies to young people isn't the policy I'd recommend.
As an alternative, you could give each person an allowance of land area/value (perhaps based on the median value, or an equal share of the nation's land territory) and say that anyone who uses more than that (with a mansion, or multiple homes) would pay the tax, and perhaps people who own less land than that should get a rebate.
Obviously corporations wouldn't get such an allowance, as they are not people for the purposes of this calculation. Also, you could make the tax exponentially progressive, to put a downward pressure on the size of land holdings and encourage competition between landlords.
- Zacru 5y agoTaxing different entities at different rates just opens the door for a middle-man with a lower tax rate to profit from simply renting the land to the entities with higher tax rates.
- dane-pgp 5y agoIf multiple middle-men all entered into contracts with one entity who wanted to set higher rental prices across the market, that would hopefully be caught by existing anti-trust / cartel laws, as well as tax evasion rules. You're right that there's a potential loophole here, but I don't think it is any more exploitable than other tax rules (i.e. it probably depends on how motivated the tax authorities are to actually enforce the rules).