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‘My Property Tax Went From $15K to a Life-Altering $91K a Year’
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this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Okay I know it's not such a popular opinion but I'm still on the notion that you shouldn't pay taxes for holding on to the place that you live.
Yeah yeah local governments need income and all that and their house is assessed over 4 million dollars and many people can't even afford a home at a 10th of that and they should have known and blah blah blah but come on, commodified housing is bad enough. Paying what amounts to a rent to the state just to hold on to the property, actual repairs and upkeep and other naturally occurring costs aside is insane.
Tax the sales of property. Tax the legal transfer of control of LLCs that "own" property. I'm not even saying never charge property tax on properties not occupied by the owner, but you should be able to have a house to live in without paying the state for the privilege of them not taking it.
What in the libertarian garbage is this? Do you like roads, schools, libraries, parks, garbage pickup, etc etc etc. Property taxes pay for these things.
But those things do not scale with the (alleged) value oft the property, but with things like property size, number oft occupants, curb length etc. Or could even be billed at actual cost (your garbage example).
Why do millionaires pay more taxes than minimum-wage workers?
Whatever answer you come up to my question can probably answer yours.
yet even if your family doesn't use these services you benefit from safe roads, educated workers, green spaces for all to have access, and public sanitation - you LITERALLY BENEFIT FROM EVERYTHING but don't want to pay.
But your taxes don't scale with the alleged value of the property either. There are caps and protections in place. That's why they were only paying $15k previously. And they didn't just repair their old house, they put an entire second story on it. Hence the reason they triggered the "major improvements" clause.
I think you're misunderstanding the post... He's saying property taxes are a necessary source of government revenue (that we all benefit from) but you shouldn't have to pay it if it's a primary residence and there should be a different structure or revenue stream. I agree with that, since a property tax is basically a wealth tax on ordinary people because it is a tax on their single biggest asset.
Where do you want the revenue needed to fund the city to come from if not from property owners?
Workers. Employers. Commuters. Capital gains. Sales.
There are so many things you can tax, so many points where money moves from one set of hands to another where you can shave a little off the top. It's just a bit absurd to me that we will shake people down for money for just having a home that an assessor figures could sell for some particular amount of money.
Tax Other Stuff
No. Those things are paid for by other taxes and service fees.
I'm thinking of the untended consequences of that policy. The first I can think of is people simply would never sell their houses because they'd get hit with enormous taxes (large enough to equal decades of property taxes). Home owners would simply rent out the houses when they need/want to move away. So home ownership for those living in the homes would collapse. Further, city services would likely starve from lack of funding because there would be no little revenue and what revenue they got would be very sporadic.
There are absolutely houses like that (in the USA at least). Those houses not in cities with police and fire protection, roads, sidewalks, snow plowing, public libraries, or any other kind of city services. If you want the benefits of a society someone has to pay the bill. Alternatively, some cities have income taxes or very high sales tax. Both of which you'd pay to live in the city.
Who are you suggesting paying the bill for your consumption of city services besides you?
I still think citizens should pay the bill for their services, but tax should be on the basis of income, and wealthier people should pay more to cover for those who can't. And why not income, the money you actually bring in, and not a portion the money your home would theoretically sell for if you sold it? The point at which to take tax is the point of transfer, whether it's labor for a wage or a change of ownership (sales and inheritance).
I absolutely don't believe that people would be less likely to sell their property because they might have to pay a percentage of the profits from the sale. And if they were less likely to sell it, who cares? Take the money from the excess houses when they die. I think I also mentioned that I'm not principally against taxes on non-resident property (which is essentially abandoned or a business asset if not owner occupied). I'm also not against rent controls.
Like God forbid one recognize that certain approaches to taxation are problematic, it must mean you're a conservative who's against government services.
My alternate take. This is a prime example of why housing shouldn't be viewed as an investment. If the value of a home outstrips the rate that wages increase then isn't this story always the logical conclusion?
Eventually no one will be able to afford a house not merely because they can't buy it in the first place, but because even if they inherit it they can't keep up with the tax bill because on paper it's worth 8 times what their parents paid even inflation adjusted. I'm not even making those proportions up, that's about the change in cost in my neighborhood I think.
Why not tax the property for all value above X. Where X is some amount over the average or median property value. That way, if you can afford a luxury home you pay some tax on it.
It's not a bad compromise, it's just a matter of finding a good value for X. And that's hard to do as housing prices continue to balloon and housing costs take up a greater percentage of people's incomes. Houses that would have cost one year's income in the 60s can easily cost 8 to 10 times that today.
I don't know, maybe you should have to pay property taxes if the land occupies more than a certain square footage. That could discourage suburban style development and promote greater population density, which could both act as a net positive.
Yeah, the devil would be in the details, of course, and to make sure there aren’t any obvious loopholes. Ideally it would be at increasing brackets as well.
Wouldn’t taxes on above-X value keep prices down? Buying fancy houses as investment could be countered by the additional running expense of taxes.
Basing it on square footage could also work, or as an additional parameter, but might make more sense in cities where space is more scarce.
Problem I see with price based rather than square footage is that it's going to vary by location and generation. A human being, or a family even, needs a certain amount of space, and beyond that there is some threshold across which one could say this family or person is undoubtedly taking up more than they actually need.
For example, how much housing does a family of 5 people reasonably expect if living a middle class lifestyle in America? I think that's something that changes generationally and regionally based on income and housing costs, but today I think such a family might expect ideally a house with five bedrooms, two or three baths, a kitchen, dining room, living room, laundry room, maybe also a den or other secondary communal room. I'm not saying all houses should be this big, or shouldn't be bigger, but that a house about this big could be a fair measuring stick for determining how much square footage a house could reasonably be without the owner-occupant paying property taxes.
Or it could be based on the number of kitchens. If a house is cut up into apartments as an investment strategy, it has to have more than one kitchen generally speaking.
For price based limits I just don't see how you avoid artificial inflation of assessments by governments or planned neglect by owners to keep houses on one side or the other of the threshold. It would also have very different impacts on different markets. And inflation and changes in the market would require whatever threshold you set to be revised fairly regularly or else fade into irrelevance.
Yeah, I agree it’s always harder to define than it seems at first glance. Square footage might be a better proxy with fewer loopholes. Problem is that a shitty rundown house will be taxed the same as a luxury house of the same size. That might be fine, I don’t know.
I think regardless of how you do it, taxes need to be adjusted for inflation or change of average living costs, like any tax brackets could/would. I think one of the goal should be to avoid artificially inflated living costs.
And also regardless of approach, tax limits should probably also depend on how many people live in the house. That can probably be abused too though.
Either way, I don’t know much about economy and taxes, this is just me thinking out loud on a complex topic.