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The problem is once you start making complex rules people will start finding loopholes and ways to work around it. Like you pointed out vacancy taxes are very

The problem is once you start making complex rules people will start finding loopholes and ways to work around it. Like you pointed out vacancy taxes are very difficult to actually enforce. If taxes are based on how long you have owned the property maybe instead of selling the property I give you a transferable 20 year rent to own lease or create a corporation that owns the property and sell you that corporation so that the ownership never changes. If taxes are based on how many properties you purchase in a year then maybe you create a separate corporation that purchases each property. No single entity has purchased more than one home. I am not a lawyer and these examples probably aren't that good, but I think you get the point. The simpler the rules are the harder they are to work around.

abeppu 4y ago
I don't think vacancy taxes are _actually_ hard to enforce, but I think there are a lot of noisy objections from people who don't want them enforced, and that can be enough to sway municipal government. I agree that simpler rules are generally harder to work around. _However_, I notice that argument is almost always made to claim that governments shouldn't try to change behavior in line with the preferences of their electorate. Tax laws have loopholes, regulations have loopholes and push jobs and industries overseas, etc. The logical end point seems to be that democratic processes are doomed to be ineffective and we should just trust everything to the invisible hand of the market. What if the real problem is that the mindset that improving policy is so hard that governments shouldn't even try, itself dooms us to bad policies? What if 20 years ago we had all said, "making complex rules to identify and block spam emails is too hard; there will always be some way for the spammers to get through. So let's not waste resources on it."
- throwaway742 4y ago
  I agree legislatures are often complicit and that is part of the reason why our laws are so ineffective. Spam filtering rules are much easier to update than legislation. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but you also can't dodge a simple tax of x percent on each property. Perhaps a better way to offset it is something like a universal basic income.

abeppu 4y ago

I don't think vacancy taxes are _actually_ hard to enforce, but I think there are a lot of noisy objections from people who don't want them enforced, and that can be enough to sway municipal government. I agree that simpler rules are generally harder to work around. _However_, I notice that argument is almost always made to claim that governments shouldn't try to change behavior in line with the preferences of their electorate. Tax laws have loopholes, regulations have loopholes and push jobs and industries overseas, etc. The logical end point seems to be that democratic processes are doomed to be ineffective and we should just trust everything to the invisible hand of the market. What if the real problem is that the mindset that improving policy is so hard that governments shouldn't even try, itself dooms us to bad policies? What if 20 years ago we had all said, "making complex rules to identify and block spam emails is too hard; there will always be some way for the spammers to get through. So let's not waste resources on it."

throwaway742 4y ago
I agree legislatures are often complicit and that is part of the reason why our laws are so ineffective. Spam filtering rules are much easier to update than legislation. I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but you also can't dodge a simple tax of x percent on each property. Perhaps a better way to offset it is something like a universal basic income.