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Texas has an amendment coming up for vote next month to allow municipalities to cut property tax on properties used for child care. Was a pleasant surprise to s

by epakai 3y ago

Texas has an amendment coming up for vote next month to allow municipalities to cut property tax on properties used for child care. Was a pleasant surprise to see real good incentives tied to a change.

Avshalom 3y ago
That sounds more like a way to let homeschoolers get out of property tax than it does anything that would lower the cost of childcare for workers.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  I don't disagree, but there does exist a network of people who run childcare services for the public out of their homes. I imagine this is who benefits from the amendment.
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    If this gets us further from a land value tax, it is bad. Simple as. 100% this is disguised handout for home schooling right wing nuts. Property tax is not a significant burden for regular childcare outfits. "Cash poor asset rich" is not a real problem and anyone telling you otherwise it out to swindle you.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      property tax is a burden for anyone who owns property in the US.
      - Ericson2314 3y ago
        The weight of my t-shirt upon my shoulders is also technically a burden. Who cares. Quantitative distinctions matter, binary burden/non-burden thinking is not helpful.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        unless the weight of your t-shirt is a cause for great worry, it's not a burden.
        sethammons 3y ago
        I pay $500/mo in property tax. If I were to watch kids to pay my rent to the government, it would take at least one full time kid. That is residential; I assume commercial tax rate would be higher. And that one kid may represent 10-25% of a caregiver's capacity.
        Ericson2314 3y ago
        Once we improve the tax to be a land value tax, and get rid of the stupid blockers of development, you can convert your house into an apartment and pay way less tax. If you are a tenant in cross-subsidized apartment building, it is really easy to work as a building-wide childcare. You want to live in as big a building as possible to have as much addressable market as possible. (Basically you might not be the best nanny but you want as many kids as ludicrously conveniently nearby as possible.)
    - Racing0461 3y ago
      > home schooling right wing nuts The government needs to compete for their tax base more. make public school worth it and these folks won't keep pulling their kids out to where the system falls apart like public transportation where only drug addicts/homeless take it.
      - Ericson2314 3y ago
        The only way to make public schools good is to to force them to be (*-)integrated so wealthy parents put the proper pressure on the state. (Karening for good) The "buy in to the school district" school apartheid-lite we have in the United States is disgusting failing race to the bottom.
    - decremental 3y ago
      [dead]
- Racing0461 3y ago
  What's wrong with that? if my kid doesn't go to public school, i should be able to take my contribution to that and use it for what i moved him to (charter school or homeschool) etc.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    No that's like antithetical to the entire concept of taxes in general and their use for all. Government services are not a market and should not be. We pay for everyone's schooling because educated people make a better democracy. If you decide the public system isn't for you, why should you have any entitlement to not continue to pay for everyone else's children like everyone else?
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      The US tax provided school system doesn't seem to do a great job at educating. Why should we support a broken system?
      - em-bee 3y ago
        because simply stopping to support it and running off to do your own thing is going to make it worse. what is needed is more funding and a push for reform.
        readthenotes1 3y ago
        Chicago and Baltimore spend tons of money for their school system with poor outcomes. Just supplying more money to a system almost never fixes anything about a broken system. A few years ago the Chicago teachers Union leader pointed out that part of the trouble with trying to teach students is that they do not have a secure home life. You're not going to fix that by giving more money to school administrators.
        em-bee 3y ago
        Just supplying more money to a system almost never fixes anything about a broken system. of course, hence the need to also push for reform the trouble with trying to teach students is that they do not have a secure home life i am aware of that, and i realize that more needs to be done than to just improve schools. but this subthread was about taking money away from schools because they are not good enough. not about students struggling because they have a bad home. those are related but different issues.
- epakai 3y ago
  Fair point. I grew up in a home day care, and my mother ran her own home day care for most of my youth so I tend to think of it from that perspective. I was public schooled as were all the children in their care, but things have shifted a bit. Alongside some of the other proposed cuts you can certainly see it as catering to a particular base, but I think the choice to manage it at the county/city level sets it a little bit apart. On second thought, daycare licensing is quite separate from homeschooling, and requires unrelated children. It can certainly be feasible to operate them together, but is that really targeting home schoolers for a tax break then?
SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
Won't that only help the landlords? How many daycares own their location?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Won't that only help the landlords? No, estimating tax burdens is more complicated than where it first falls. Depending on how competitive the retail real estate market is in an area, you would expect to find landlords competing for childcare tenants to varying degrees.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    So there's a lot of factors that may or may not help encourage childcare facilities. To me it smells of trickle-down for commercial locations.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > there's a lot of factors that may or may not help encourage childcare facilities This is always true. Even if you give a cash bonus to the childcare facilities, it may only help management, or may only help customers if it results in facilities competing by offering sign-up bonuses and lower prices, or it might circle back to landlords through increased rents if the supply of childcare-compatible real estate is constrained.
FireBeyond 3y ago
I'm absolutely sure that will translate into a 1:1 rent reduction for those facilities. What I think it will more be used for: "Homeschool your kids and get a tax benefit!"
charlie0 3y ago
This isn't as bad as it sounds. Not sure what the rules in TX are, but in CA child care is a business, meaning you have to run it like one. Homeschooling one own's children isn't going to meet this definition, so only bonafide businesses should qualify for this.
- larkost 3y ago
  I suspect that there is a lot of (not really) grey area here. My impression is that many homeschoolers wind up working with other people, so at least some of the time they have other people's kids in their home. It would be fairly easy to brand this as a small business, argue a tax loss, and take deductions on part of your home. And there are a lot of similarly shady deductions out there. I had a co-worker whose wife was a dentist and owned her own practice. He was telling me about how great it was that they were able to expense her car every time they bought her a new one. But when I asked: the only business use of it she has is to drive back and forth to the office. She never drives to other work locations with it, and including that commute, all of her uses of it are personal (commutes are not business expenses). When I pointed out that this means that it can't be a business expense (my wife was taking a tax course at the time), he insisted that all of her dentist friends did the same, and that it was "standard practice".

by epakai 3y ago

Avshalom 3y ago

That sounds more like a way to let homeschoolers get out of property tax than it does anything that would lower the cost of childcare for workers.

jstarfish 3y ago
I don't disagree, but there does exist a network of people who run childcare services for the public out of their homes. I imagine this is who benefits from the amendment.
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  If this gets us further from a land value tax, it is bad. Simple as. 100% this is disguised handout for home schooling right wing nuts. Property tax is not a significant burden for regular childcare outfits. "Cash poor asset rich" is not a real problem and anyone telling you otherwise it out to swindle you.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    property tax is a burden for anyone who owns property in the US.
    - Ericson2314 3y ago
      The weight of my t-shirt upon my shoulders is also technically a burden. Who cares. Quantitative distinctions matter, binary burden/non-burden thinking is not helpful.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        unless the weight of your t-shirt is a cause for great worry, it's not a burden.
      - sethammons 3y ago
        I pay $500/mo in property tax. If I were to watch kids to pay my rent to the government, it would take at least one full time kid. That is residential; I assume commercial tax rate would be higher. And that one kid may represent 10-25% of a caregiver's capacity.
        Ericson2314 3y ago
        Once we improve the tax to be a land value tax, and get rid of the stupid blockers of development, you can convert your house into an apartment and pay way less tax. If you are a tenant in cross-subsidized apartment building, it is really easy to work as a building-wide childcare. You want to live in as big a building as possible to have as much addressable market as possible. (Basically you might not be the best nanny but you want as many kids as ludicrously conveniently nearby as possible.)
  - Racing0461 3y ago
    > home schooling right wing nuts The government needs to compete for their tax base more. make public school worth it and these folks won't keep pulling their kids out to where the system falls apart like public transportation where only drug addicts/homeless take it.
    - Ericson2314 3y ago
      The only way to make public schools good is to to force them to be (*-)integrated so wealthy parents put the proper pressure on the state. (Karening for good) The "buy in to the school district" school apartheid-lite we have in the United States is disgusting failing race to the bottom.
  - decremental 3y ago
    [dead]
Racing0461 3y ago
What's wrong with that? if my kid doesn't go to public school, i should be able to take my contribution to that and use it for what i moved him to (charter school or homeschool) etc.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  No that's like antithetical to the entire concept of taxes in general and their use for all. Government services are not a market and should not be. We pay for everyone's schooling because educated people make a better democracy. If you decide the public system isn't for you, why should you have any entitlement to not continue to pay for everyone else's children like everyone else?
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    The US tax provided school system doesn't seem to do a great job at educating. Why should we support a broken system?
    - em-bee 3y ago
      because simply stopping to support it and running off to do your own thing is going to make it worse. what is needed is more funding and a push for reform.
      - readthenotes1 3y ago
        Chicago and Baltimore spend tons of money for their school system with poor outcomes. Just supplying more money to a system almost never fixes anything about a broken system. A few years ago the Chicago teachers Union leader pointed out that part of the trouble with trying to teach students is that they do not have a secure home life. You're not going to fix that by giving more money to school administrators.
        em-bee 3y ago
        Just supplying more money to a system almost never fixes anything about a broken system. of course, hence the need to also push for reform the trouble with trying to teach students is that they do not have a secure home life i am aware of that, and i realize that more needs to be done than to just improve schools. but this subthread was about taking money away from schools because they are not good enough. not about students struggling because they have a bad home. those are related but different issues.
epakai 3y ago
Fair point. I grew up in a home day care, and my mother ran her own home day care for most of my youth so I tend to think of it from that perspective. I was public schooled as were all the children in their care, but things have shifted a bit. Alongside some of the other proposed cuts you can certainly see it as catering to a particular base, but I think the choice to manage it at the county/city level sets it a little bit apart. On second thought, daycare licensing is quite separate from homeschooling, and requires unrelated children. It can certainly be feasible to operate them together, but is that really targeting home schoolers for a tax break then?

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago

Won't that only help the landlords? How many daycares own their location?

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Won't that only help the landlords? No, estimating tax burdens is more complicated than where it first falls. Depending on how competitive the retail real estate market is in an area, you would expect to find landlords competing for childcare tenants to varying degrees.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  So there's a lot of factors that may or may not help encourage childcare facilities. To me it smells of trickle-down for commercial locations.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > there's a lot of factors that may or may not help encourage childcare facilities This is always true. Even if you give a cash bonus to the childcare facilities, it may only help management, or may only help customers if it results in facilities competing by offering sign-up bonuses and lower prices, or it might circle back to landlords through increased rents if the supply of childcare-compatible real estate is constrained.

FireBeyond 3y ago

I'm absolutely sure that will translate into a 1:1 rent reduction for those facilities. What I think it will more be used for: "Homeschool your kids and get a tax benefit!"

charlie0 3y ago

This isn't as bad as it sounds. Not sure what the rules in TX are, but in CA child care is a business, meaning you have to run it like one. Homeschooling one own's children isn't going to meet this definition, so only bonafide businesses should qualify for this.

larkost 3y ago
I suspect that there is a lot of (not really) grey area here. My impression is that many homeschoolers wind up working with other people, so at least some of the time they have other people's kids in their home. It would be fairly easy to brand this as a small business, argue a tax loss, and take deductions on part of your home. And there are a lot of similarly shady deductions out there. I had a co-worker whose wife was a dentist and owned her own practice. He was telling me about how great it was that they were able to expense her car every time they bought her a new one. But when I asked: the only business use of it she has is to drive back and forth to the office. She never drives to other work locations with it, and including that commute, all of her uses of it are personal (commutes are not business expenses). When I pointed out that this means that it can't be a business expense (my wife was taking a tax course at the time), he insisted that all of her dentist friends did the same, and that it was "standard practice".