In my opinion, a liberal society with progressive taxation (including the property tax) tends to provide more opportunities for those who are born without assets than a society that overly protects the privileges of feudal estates (“passing on a home to your kids”), and would be a better society to live in behind a veil of ignorance.
> One of the issues here with doing something like building an apartment complex means now you have to live in the apartment or move your family and become a landlord
You can also build a condo building and own one of the condos instead of managing rentals.
> With respect to rent, I’m not sure. Maybe it makes more sense to tax rental income than the property
The problems with the income tax on rent are that 1) it penalizes renting out land while rewarding speculators who leave land vacant, and 2) it punishes renters who bear a higher burden than owner-occupiers who do not pay tax on the imputed rent (incidentally, the fact that imputed rent is excluded is basically a mistake of the original Form 1040; see Lawrence Zelenak, “The Early Income Tax and the Imputed Rental Income of Homeowners” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108377157.008). The property tax is a fairer and less distortionary tax than an income tax on rent.
> If you’re a home owner a lot of this just seems like a bad idea. It makes more sense to maintain things how they are.
From a Bay Area resident to a Great Lakes resident, I hope people there heed the cautionary tale that is the Bay Area: maintaining the residential housing stock almost unchanged despite strong economic growth and agglomeration effects, and protecting property owners by discriminating against later generations, is an absolute disaster for lower income and even middle income households.
One of the issues here with doing something like building an apartment complex means now you have to live in the apartment or move your family and become a landlord. You do become displaced, and you have to sever neighborhood ties you have. In an era where many people are searching for meaning and community, I’m not sure that having your neighbors move and build an apartment complex on the lot next to you is a good thing. You will potentially have conflicts with increased road usage, or maybe property taxes increase to pay for a dozen more children to attend a school that previously didn’t. Although some here have suggested property taxes are meant more so for distributing wealth than to pay for services. At some point somebody pays to build a new school. If you’re a home owner a lot of this just seems like a bad idea. It makes more sense to maintain things how they are.
With respect to rent, I’m not sure. Maybe it makes more sense to tax rental income than the property. Ultimately we have a few problems that aren’t easy to solve, and unclear goals. I don’t think apartment buildings everywhere is a good thing, and that’s the future of the Bay Area. I’d want to develop a tax and property rights structure that encourages medium density mixed use development. We have to question home ownership too - passing on a home to your kids means because you happened to be here first locks others out of the market. Why is it considered fair that I can’t afford ably buy a home in Tahoe just because someone was born before me? Maybe it is fair. Maybe it isn’t. Tough questions. And even if you raise property taxes, rich people won’t care. They’ll still live in Tahoe and I’ll still only be able to afford to life next to cornfields.
Idk.