Personal Finance

So a less efficient and more complicated land tax? Is there any benefit to this compared to just taxing based on the value?

What are the unintended consequences of this proposal? It is amazing how many people replying to this topic have proposed something without considering what effect it will have. Sure there is a problem, but most solutions have serious negative downsides.

That's what property tax is for.

Many landlords don’t even pay taxes on the money they DO make.

They can depreciate a property to offset their income, even though the property is going up in value. The catch is that they have to pay taxes on more of the money they get from selling the property. But if they don’t sell, potentially no taxes for decades. And if they leave it to their kids in their will, no taxes there either and the kid’s cost basis in the property is the market value at the time they received it. So they can start the depreciation all over again.

This is how my non-expert self understands it anyway. It’s part of what draws some people into real estate.

In Denmark most apartments have “residence requirement” - if you own a unit and keep it empty the city will fill it with someone waiting for public housing.

landlords ought not exist

The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.

They don’t? They do where I live. Property tax is real in Michigan.