54 ms·

This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combine

This is such a non-story, mainly driven by the fact that home ownership in Nordic countries is ubiquitous (80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling) combined with the high medium incomes resulting in those houses being quite expensive. I’d really recommend not trying to draw any deeper conclusions from this data. Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentives paying off a mortgage early vs “leveling up” your debt/house.

robomartin 4y ago
> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of course. However, if you stop paying property taxes you can lose your property in a forced sale. That is not my definition of owning something. If it can be taken away, you do not own it. We have somehow been led to believe we can own property. I don't think that's the case. If you own your property it should mean that you can live there with zero income and have nothing to pay anyone except for the things you want to pay for (power, gas, connectivity, whatever). Someone might say: We need taxes to pay for X. Well, sure. I get that. We should get that money through other means, not through a system where people work their entire lives to pay off a mortgage only to discover they will have to keep paying to "own" that home for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the distinction should be your residence vs. investment/rental property. Not sure. Haven't through it through much deeper than that.
- yokoprime 4y ago
  > if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property Depends on where you live. Some counties has property taxes, others do not. One reason for why Norwegians have lots of debt is that its subsidized since you can write off parts of the interests from your taxes. Also there is taxes on wealth, i.e the tax system incentivizes having debt.
- JUNGLEISMASSIVE 4y ago
  [dead]
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  Property owners benefit more from local tax spending than anyone else. Why shouldn't they pay for it? We already subsidize home ownership by quite a bit. We don't need to subsidize it more.
  - dataflow 4y ago
    > Property owners benefit more from local tax spending than anyone else. Why shouldn't they pay for it? Couldn't you use the same argument to say that poor people should pay more in taxes because they benefit more from it?
    - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      That's nonsense. The richest people benefit the most from having a stable government with well-funded police protecting their property.
      - dataflow 4y ago
        It's not nonsense, you just looked at the extreme case on the other side. You can try to make arguments like that for the "richest" people, but what about everyone else? Someone making $1 below the Medicaid income limit should pay a ton more in taxes than someone making $1 above it because they get back a lot more in return?
        TheCoelacanth 4y ago
        If they're benefiting so much, why are they poor? Clearly wealthier people are getting more benefit.
        yucky 4y ago
        Does someone below the poverty level qualify for more government assistance than a middle class person?
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  I’m sympathetic to this observation but what’s your point? Just a tangent? There is nothing wrong with that but I’m not sure if this is supposed to clarify something. For whatever it’s worth it looks like at least Sweden and Norway have property taxes. Didn’t check others. China is an example of a country without them. Except you can’t own land in China. Your house is effective leased from the government. So not exactly an improvement.
  - sohtym 4y ago
    Sweden technically has a property tax, but it is a maximum of ~900€ a year.
    - robomartin 4y ago
      That seems like an affordable (and possibly equally-shared) way to contribute to the running costs of a society. What happens if you don't pay this? Can they take your home away and sell it? They can do that in the US, BTW.
      - vegardx 4y ago
        They can. But I don't really see how that could happen if you didn't also have a mortgage. You would easily be able to finance this, unless your property was also pretty much worthless. And if it was practically worthless you'd either not pay any property tax at all, due to deductibles, or pay basically nothing. In Norway property tax (where applicable, it's up to local government) is measured as a percentage of the taxable value of primary residence. Usually 0,2 per mille or around that. The taxable value is less than the property value. It's a progressive scheme, everything below 10MNOK is measured as 25% of property value (marked value-ish), and 75% for everything over 10MNOK. For secondary houses the taxable value is set to the property value.
- kiba 4y ago
  Someone might say: We need taxes to pay for X. Well, sure. I get that. We should get that money through other means, not through a system where people work their entire lives to pay off a mortgage only to discover they will have to keep paying to "own" that home for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the distinction should be your residence vs. investment/rental property. Not sure. Haven't through it through much deeper than that. I think we should tax land, but not buildings. Land shouldn't be horded and should be distributed to folks who are best to make use of it for societal's benefit. The idea of building enough nest egg for retirement doesn't make sense to me, especially if we take the long term perspective. It only make sense because we age over time and thus get weaker and frail. If we were always healthy as a horse, then we would have periods in which we work for our living, but not permanent retirement.
  - Ebree 4y ago
    the very idea of fixing anything with taxes is wrong primary role of land is to not have any civilized role, just supporting nature and thanks to nature humans (as they are naturally part of it), land under cities and any density populated areas is area of human civilization, but usually not humane civilization, people tend to fix human artificially created problems with artificially created solutions usually creating new problems later land shouldn't be hoarded if every national has his own piece of it guaranteed (only inheritable) then there is no legitimisation for hoarding more but the piece should be big enough to let person feed himself from it then the rest can be city land for lending by nation to companies and all the rest is the shared coowned land like forests for mushroom collecting, limited hunting or fishing If no corporation or foreigner can hoard your land you fixed most of the problem already we decide our health and lifespan with everyday choices at shop and choosing place of living, working and it's water, air and soil quality ofc some of us get born with a better starting point but that's what maintaining common standards is for saving in inflative currency is irrational itself retirement system is a lottery game to keep people focused on working and paying taxes only, schooling to make obedient workers and alimentary system is a divorce maker to break society into individual atoms it's to block any need to group spontaneously, plan own future yourself, organise organically and oppose actual system people use their things best for themselves never for societal benefit especially that there is no one universal definition of societal benefit if every person has own idea about it it means you would give big share to some individual(s) who would build their idea of societal benefit that could contradict majority's sense of their benefit and common benefit btw if you make it uncommon it by definition becomes non common but I still like your sense of need of meritocracy and helping those more capable - still most important part lacking here is keeping them bound with bottom of pyramid they come from and serve, sharing fruits if their skills so the bottom would proliferate yielding new exceptional units lifting everything up continuously.
- dataflow 4y ago
  Note, the term you're looking for is "allodial title".
  - robomartin 4y ago
    Learned something new. Thanks!
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
  > If you own your property it should mean ... that you pay for the necessary law enforcement, justice, defense, etc. Why do you expect those to be free?
  - robomartin 4y ago
    Typically a good idea to read the entire post before commenting. I did not say anything about anything having to be free. Since you brought it up. No, they are not free. We have to pay for them. My point is that I should be able to own my paid-off home. The government should not be able to take my property away because of taxes. Payment for the services you mention should have no connection to home ownership. Everyone uses them. Everyone pays for them equally (with some consideration for low income individuals). We need to stop thinking about taxing everything from farts to homes to pay for the running of society. Send everyone a bill on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. We all pay for it. Don't tax my farts.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      The Constitution is quite clear that you can be deprived of life, liberty, and property after due process. The home is little different from any other property.
    - swexbe 4y ago
      What do you think would happen to the value of your home if the government, say, shut down the public road connecting it to the rest of society? What about the public water/electricity infrastructure? If you don't own property, you might still benefit from these services. But they don't affect your net worth.
      - robomartin 4y ago
        > What do you think would happen to the value of your home if the government, say, shut down the public road connecting it to the rest of society? Depends on where you live. Property values could actually increase! Portland, Oregon, for example. Disclaimer: Since so many these days have lost the capacity to recognize and accept it...that was a lame attempt at humor. Please don't lose your shit over it. This is called a "joke". Jokes were an accepted form of social interaction many decades ago. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/joke https://www.dictionary.com/browse/joke
- toast0 4y ago
  If all 50 US states came up with the same thing, it's probably hard to do significantly better. Many states have some method of limiting increases, which helps you budget for the future costs, as long as the rules don't change. Some states, I think Nevada is one, have a program where you can pay an actuarial estimate and be set for the rest of your life as long as you don't move. Many states have programs where you can defer property tax payments until you move or die. Many also have programs specifically to low income seniors and people with disabilities.
  - yucky 4y ago
    > Some states, I think Nevada is one, have a program where you can pay an actuarial estimate and be set for the rest of your life as long as you don't move. It was referred to as "allodial title", and I believe the program only lasted for a few years, so unless you're grandfathered in you aren't eligible.
    - toast0 4y ago
      Whoops, I'm way out of date.
- paddim8 4y ago
  Well Sweden doesn't have a property tax in those situations
- droopyEyelids 4y ago
  Property and ownership are defined by people, in laws- they are not mathematical concepts that have some sort of natural consistency.
- tomcar288 4y ago
  Absolutely! You can't possibly say you own something if you have to pay rent on it to keep it. and not allowing someone to even own a home is basically tantamount to taxing their right to live. And, you can always have a tiered system, for example, 0% on the first 1 million, then 0.5% on the next 500k, etc. that way at least people can downsize to something that they can own.
refurb 4y ago
> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling You have to be careful with that statistic. It's not that 80% of Norwegians own their own home, it's that 80% live in a home that is owned someone in the household. So if you have a single parent, who owns a home, with 3 adult children living in one house, that statistic would say those 4 people have a 100% rate of homeownership. All countries measure it this way. For example, Singapore has a rate of 91%. However, adults tend to live with their parents until they get married. They'd love to move out before that, but rents are sky high in Singapore, so people tend to just live with their parents. It's also pretty common to have multi-generation households.
- vegardx 4y ago
  If that's the case then I'd assume that the "real" number would be significantly higher, given that Northern europeans leave their parental home at very young age, compared to most of the world. I could only find updated statistics from the EU[0], so there's no data on Norway, but if memory serves me right, Norway has even lower age than Sweden. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=494351 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

robomartin 4y ago

> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes? One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of course. However, if you stop paying property taxes you can lose your property in a forced sale. That is not my definition of owning something. If it can be taken away, you do not own it. We have somehow been led to believe we can own property. I don't think that's the case. If you own your property it should mean that you can live there with zero income and have nothing to pay anyone except for the things you want to pay for (power, gas, connectivity, whatever). Someone might say: We need taxes to pay for X. Well, sure. I get that. We should get that money through other means, not through a system where people work their entire lives to pay off a mortgage only to discover they will have to keep paying to "own" that home for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the distinction should be your residence vs. investment/rental property. Not sure. Haven't through it through much deeper than that.

yokoprime 4y ago
> if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property Depends on where you live. Some counties has property taxes, others do not. One reason for why Norwegians have lots of debt is that its subsidized since you can write off parts of the interests from your taxes. Also there is taxes on wealth, i.e the tax system incentivizes having debt.
JUNGLEISMASSIVE 4y ago
[dead]
TheCoelacanth 4y ago
Property owners benefit more from local tax spending than anyone else. Why shouldn't they pay for it? We already subsidize home ownership by quite a bit. We don't need to subsidize it more.
- dataflow 4y ago
  > Property owners benefit more from local tax spending than anyone else. Why shouldn't they pay for it? Couldn't you use the same argument to say that poor people should pay more in taxes because they benefit more from it?
  - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
    That's nonsense. The richest people benefit the most from having a stable government with well-funded police protecting their property.
    - dataflow 4y ago
      It's not nonsense, you just looked at the extreme case on the other side. You can try to make arguments like that for the "richest" people, but what about everyone else? Someone making $1 below the Medicaid income limit should pay a ton more in taxes than someone making $1 above it because they get back a lot more in return?
      - TheCoelacanth 4y ago
        If they're benefiting so much, why are they poor? Clearly wealthier people are getting more benefit.
        yucky 4y ago
        Does someone below the poverty level qualify for more government assistance than a middle class person?
nonethewiser 4y ago
I’m sympathetic to this observation but what’s your point? Just a tangent? There is nothing wrong with that but I’m not sure if this is supposed to clarify something. For whatever it’s worth it looks like at least Sweden and Norway have property taxes. Didn’t check others. China is an example of a country without them. Except you can’t own land in China. Your house is effective leased from the government. So not exactly an improvement.
- sohtym 4y ago
  Sweden technically has a property tax, but it is a maximum of ~900€ a year.
  - robomartin 4y ago
    That seems like an affordable (and possibly equally-shared) way to contribute to the running costs of a society. What happens if you don't pay this? Can they take your home away and sell it? They can do that in the US, BTW.
    - vegardx 4y ago
      They can. But I don't really see how that could happen if you didn't also have a mortgage. You would easily be able to finance this, unless your property was also pretty much worthless. And if it was practically worthless you'd either not pay any property tax at all, due to deductibles, or pay basically nothing. In Norway property tax (where applicable, it's up to local government) is measured as a percentage of the taxable value of primary residence. Usually 0,2 per mille or around that. The taxable value is less than the property value. It's a progressive scheme, everything below 10MNOK is measured as 25% of property value (marked value-ish), and 75% for everything over 10MNOK. For secondary houses the taxable value is set to the property value.
kiba 4y ago
Someone might say: We need taxes to pay for X. Well, sure. I get that. We should get that money through other means, not through a system where people work their entire lives to pay off a mortgage only to discover they will have to keep paying to "own" that home for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the distinction should be your residence vs. investment/rental property. Not sure. Haven't through it through much deeper than that. I think we should tax land, but not buildings. Land shouldn't be horded and should be distributed to folks who are best to make use of it for societal's benefit. The idea of building enough nest egg for retirement doesn't make sense to me, especially if we take the long term perspective. It only make sense because we age over time and thus get weaker and frail. If we were always healthy as a horse, then we would have periods in which we work for our living, but not permanent retirement.
- Ebree 4y ago
  the very idea of fixing anything with taxes is wrong primary role of land is to not have any civilized role, just supporting nature and thanks to nature humans (as they are naturally part of it), land under cities and any density populated areas is area of human civilization, but usually not humane civilization, people tend to fix human artificially created problems with artificially created solutions usually creating new problems later land shouldn't be hoarded if every national has his own piece of it guaranteed (only inheritable) then there is no legitimisation for hoarding more but the piece should be big enough to let person feed himself from it then the rest can be city land for lending by nation to companies and all the rest is the shared coowned land like forests for mushroom collecting, limited hunting or fishing If no corporation or foreigner can hoard your land you fixed most of the problem already we decide our health and lifespan with everyday choices at shop and choosing place of living, working and it's water, air and soil quality ofc some of us get born with a better starting point but that's what maintaining common standards is for saving in inflative currency is irrational itself retirement system is a lottery game to keep people focused on working and paying taxes only, schooling to make obedient workers and alimentary system is a divorce maker to break society into individual atoms it's to block any need to group spontaneously, plan own future yourself, organise organically and oppose actual system people use their things best for themselves never for societal benefit especially that there is no one universal definition of societal benefit if every person has own idea about it it means you would give big share to some individual(s) who would build their idea of societal benefit that could contradict majority's sense of their benefit and common benefit btw if you make it uncommon it by definition becomes non common but I still like your sense of need of meritocracy and helping those more capable - still most important part lacking here is keeping them bound with bottom of pyramid they come from and serve, sharing fruits if their skills so the bottom would proliferate yielding new exceptional units lifting everything up continuously.
dataflow 4y ago
Note, the term you're looking for is "allodial title".
- robomartin 4y ago
  Learned something new. Thanks!
B1FF_PSUVM 4y ago
> If you own your property it should mean ... that you pay for the necessary law enforcement, justice, defense, etc. Why do you expect those to be free?
- robomartin 4y ago
  Typically a good idea to read the entire post before commenting. I did not say anything about anything having to be free. Since you brought it up. No, they are not free. We have to pay for them. My point is that I should be able to own my paid-off home. The government should not be able to take my property away because of taxes. Payment for the services you mention should have no connection to home ownership. Everyone uses them. Everyone pays for them equally (with some consideration for low income individuals). We need to stop thinking about taxing everything from farts to homes to pay for the running of society. Send everyone a bill on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. We all pay for it. Don't tax my farts.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    The Constitution is quite clear that you can be deprived of life, liberty, and property after due process. The home is little different from any other property.
  - swexbe 4y ago
    What do you think would happen to the value of your home if the government, say, shut down the public road connecting it to the rest of society? What about the public water/electricity infrastructure? If you don't own property, you might still benefit from these services. But they don't affect your net worth.
    - robomartin 4y ago
      > What do you think would happen to the value of your home if the government, say, shut down the public road connecting it to the rest of society? Depends on where you live. Property values could actually increase! Portland, Oregon, for example. Disclaimer: Since so many these days have lost the capacity to recognize and accept it...that was a lame attempt at humor. Please don't lose your shit over it. This is called a "joke". Jokes were an accepted form of social interaction many decades ago. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/joke https://www.dictionary.com/browse/joke
toast0 4y ago
If all 50 US states came up with the same thing, it's probably hard to do significantly better. Many states have some method of limiting increases, which helps you budget for the future costs, as long as the rules don't change. Some states, I think Nevada is one, have a program where you can pay an actuarial estimate and be set for the rest of your life as long as you don't move. Many states have programs where you can defer property tax payments until you move or die. Many also have programs specifically to low income seniors and people with disabilities.
- yucky 4y ago
  > Some states, I think Nevada is one, have a program where you can pay an actuarial estimate and be set for the rest of your life as long as you don't move. It was referred to as "allodial title", and I believe the program only lasted for a few years, so unless you're grandfathered in you aren't eligible.
  - toast0 4y ago
    Whoops, I'm way out of date.
paddim8 4y ago
Well Sweden doesn't have a property tax in those situations
droopyEyelids 4y ago
Property and ownership are defined by people, in laws- they are not mathematical concepts that have some sort of natural consistency.
tomcar288 4y ago
Absolutely! You can't possibly say you own something if you have to pay rent on it to keep it. and not allowing someone to even own a home is basically tantamount to taxing their right to live. And, you can always have a tiered system, for example, 0% on the first 1 million, then 0.5% on the next 500k, etc. that way at least people can downsize to something that they can own.

refurb 4y ago

> 80% of Norwegians OWN their primary dwelling You have to be careful with that statistic. It's not that 80% of Norwegians own their own home, it's that 80% live in a home that is owned someone in the household. So if you have a single parent, who owns a home, with 3 adult children living in one house, that statistic would say those 4 people have a 100% rate of homeownership. All countries measure it this way. For example, Singapore has a rate of 91%. However, adults tend to live with their parents until they get married. They'd love to move out before that, but rents are sky high in Singapore, so people tend to just live with their parents. It's also pretty common to have multi-generation households.

vegardx 4y ago
If that's the case then I'd assume that the "real" number would be significantly higher, given that Northern europeans leave their parental home at very young age, compared to most of the world. I could only find updated statistics from the EU[0], so there's no data on Norway, but if memory serves me right, Norway has even lower age than Sweden. [0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?oldid=494351 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...