My first instinct is “yes” but then I thought about it and I think it’s just going to exacerbate the short-stay problem unless combined with other measures.
My first instinct is “yes” but then I thought about it and I think it’s just going to exacerbate the short-stay problem unless combined with other measures.
A flat land tax is a bit rough. Take some 80-year-old pensioner living in a simple house in suburbs. They’ve lived there for 60 years, only that suburb is now gentrified and a blanket 1% tax on the house is now a $10k/year tax bill they need to come up with (Just making up example of 1% of $1 Million property) just to stay in their own home.
This is a tough problem to figure out. I’m glad it isn’t my job. Whatever the solution is, I’m sure it’s more complicated that just blanket-taxing land. There’d need to be some exemptions to address this (which wouldn’t be that uncommon) and other scenarios I’m too dumb to think of. And whatever exemptions are applied, would naturally lead to people exploiting them as loopholes.
The people at prosper have put some thought into this. https://www.prosper.org.au/campaigns/stamp-duty-to-land-tax/ there scheme allows the elderly to defer the tax until sale which prevents them from being forced to sale but still incentivises it.
Fuck a flat land tax idea. On top of GST, Income Tax, Rates and interest (plus stamp duty), it’s just a money grab.
I mean like do you have an alternative to taxes? The whole point of this is you’d pay less after the switch.
This issue is actually what undid Margaret Thatcher
In the 80s I think there were a few proponents saying that a land tax could replace all other taxes. Very broad based and efficient.
IDK if it was a good idea, it probably would’ve been good in the 80s IMO.
However, completely retarded in the digital age. Productivity does not require land anymore.