How Property Taxes Shape Our Cities

Re:How Property Taxes Shape Our Cities by landryraccoon on Tuesday July 03, 2018 @02:05PM (#17452389)

You're pointing out another really bad side effect of Prop 13. Local communities have less tax incentive to allow higher density, since property taxes are capped. On the other hand, they are strongly incentivized to overbuild office space and retail, since they can increase sales taxes. In other words, if Prop 13 were repealed, communities would have more reason to allow housing construction (since the resulting housing could be taxed more).

The result of your policy is not only increased cost of housing and underdevelopment, but higher sales taxes as well. If California had a more healthy proportion of property taxes, then sales taxes wouldn't be forced up to nearly 10% to fund government.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Property Taxes Shape Our Cities by toast0 on Tuesday July 03, 2018 @05:11PM (#17453650)

If you turn a single family home into 10 condos, you'll probably get a bigger combined assessment, and also more frequent turnover. Prop 13 actually would encourage this.

If your turn it into apartments though, you've probably eliminated turnover, since it's much easier to own apartments through corporate forms that won't trigger a reassessment.

[ Parent | on HN ]