There is support growing in Vancouver for a surtax based on property value that would be offset by income taxes, and wouldn't apply to those who are retired or on disability [1]. This would be collected from both foreigners who are underreporting their income as well as the idle rich, while also putting additional pressure on those leaving homes vacant to rent.
The idea is to renew the social contract, so that those who are working and contributing to the economy can enjoy the benefits of reasonably affordable housing.
Why not just apply to it to non-resident aliens (a federal income tax status) rather than to people who aren't US citizens or permanent residents (which is related to nationality/immigration status).
All US citizens are tax resident. All permanent residents are resident aliens. However, by defining things this way, you are excluding people who are living in the US on a temporary work visa (e.g. H-1B, TN, L-1, etc.) and other temporary residents who are, nonetheless, very much resident in the US, in that they spend over 183 days in a year (or more than 4 months per year averaged over 3 years; the rules are kind of complicated) in the US.
As other comments mentioned, a tax like this should also affect rich citizens who similarly contribute to vacant houses, so to actually solve the problem I guess it should affect all property owners
To pass a court challenge, the laws as written and the discussions around them have to apply to everyone otherwise it would be too discriminatory (5th amendment equal liberty clause, & 14th amendment equal protection clause). Maybe you could write it as all homebuyers in that jurisdiction being subject to the tax, and then its tiered for certain variables.
I think we could accomplish it but not at a local or state level
I feel they could simply apply the same tax to non US citizens/permanent residents trying to purchase a home in the Seattle area.
The idea of a vacancy tax seems hard to apply while respecting people privacy.
If the owner is a non citizen who doesn't live in the US, you can use immigration records to know of his presence, and they he/she can show rent documents to prove if the house was occupied. But this looks like it would be hard to enforce.
It's interesting to see how other cities are tackling the issue, Paris bumping up the tax to 60% of the fair market value of rent for instance : http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-07/vacant-homes-are-gl...
This lost also shows that while Vancouver is high on the list, San Francisco and NYC are higher.