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This could be improved by changing the criterion: an actual human needs to be registered as living in that house and live there. LLCs, trusts, and other entiti

by amluto 2y ago

This could be improved by changing the criterion: an actual human needs to be registered as living in that house and live there. LLCs, trusts, and other entities don’t count. If people want to split their time, fine, let them have as many houses as they want, declare what fraction of their time is spent in each one, and get that fractional credit for each one. Worried about a couple taking the credit for each person separately? Fine, make the credit only reduce a fixed amount of tax per person — that $200M fancy house doesn’t get all of the tax waived just because one human is in it.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> an actual human needs to be registered as living in that house and live there Relatives. Again, these measures have been implemented across the world. Miraculously, nobody owns two homes. In cities, where competition for land is fiercest, I would further fully expect the tax to be borne by tenants. Because nothing was fundamentally fixed about the supply-demand mismatch.
- amluto 2y ago
  Did you read the second half of my comment? If each human only gets to reduce tax on, say $500k of residence, then relatives are of limited value for abusing the system. And some of those relatives may prefer to claim their exemption on their own homes…
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    This is a progressive property-tax system. It works because it avoids counting houses. (It's different because houses are discrete. Housing value is not. Dividing discrete assets is trivial. Dividing continuous ones is not.)
    - amluto 2y ago
      I personally think that progressive taxes and benefits can be quite reasonable, as long as they’re kept simple and non-discriminatory. As soon as the designs start to get clever and, say, phase benefits out with increasing wealth or income, they break down quickly. Medicaid would be an example of getting it very, very wrong.
mizzao 2y ago
The more complicated laws are written to try and cover more edge conditions, the more loopholes they create.

by amluto 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> an actual human needs to be registered as living in that house and live there Relatives. Again, these measures have been implemented across the world. Miraculously, nobody owns two homes. In cities, where competition for land is fiercest, I would further fully expect the tax to be borne by tenants. Because nothing was fundamentally fixed about the supply-demand mismatch.

amluto 2y ago
Did you read the second half of my comment? If each human only gets to reduce tax on, say $500k of residence, then relatives are of limited value for abusing the system. And some of those relatives may prefer to claim their exemption on their own homes…
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  This is a progressive property-tax system. It works because it avoids counting houses. (It's different because houses are discrete. Housing value is not. Dividing discrete assets is trivial. Dividing continuous ones is not.)
  - amluto 2y ago
    I personally think that progressive taxes and benefits can be quite reasonable, as long as they’re kept simple and non-discriminatory. As soon as the designs start to get clever and, say, phase benefits out with increasing wealth or income, they break down quickly. Medicaid would be an example of getting it very, very wrong.

mizzao 2y ago

The more complicated laws are written to try and cover more edge conditions, the more loopholes they create.