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Comment by kobeya | Hacker News Reader

Wait, what is a property tax if it is not those things?

In the US, the tax is attached to the property. In England, its attached to the occupant. The 15th Duke of Whatever with vacant land doesn't pay anything.

It has advantages and disadvantages. In my city, abandoned property often gets saddled with old tax liens and cannot be given away.

`It has advantages and disadvantages. In my city, abandoned property often gets saddled with old tax liens and cannot be given away. `

Surely this means the land has a negative value, and should get a positive tax, seems silly to have liens that are > than the value of the property.

In Colorado, property with tax liens is seized and auctioned to the highest bidder after a certain period of time.

What state/country do you live in?

If the vacant land has a property on it then he sure does; the owner is liable for a portion of the tax on unoccupied buildings.

A yearly levy, based on a fair market valuation of the property (+ improvements), paid for by the landholder.

To put it another way, a property tax would be paid by the freeholder, not the leaseholder. This wouldn't make much of a difference for renters (as the owner would simply pass the cost on), but for owners of leasehold property it would be a stunning boon (and for freeholders who have sold the lease a disaster).

The owner's ability to pass the cost on depends on the conditions of supply and demand in the market, as always.

The fact that this county tax is paid by the leaseholder not the property owner is what was missing from the context. (And it boggles my mind why this is the case.)

England is run by landowners who are really hostile to the idea of property tax. The last big attempt at reforming the ancient "council rates" system in the 90s converted it to a per-person "Poll Tax". This was incredibly unpopular, widely boycotted, and resulted in riots. The system was dialled back to a system based on the value of the property in 1991, paid by the occupiers, with exemptions for students and empty properties, and a 25% discount for people living alone (mostly pensioners).

> with exemptions for [...] empty properties

https://www.gov.uk/council-tax/second-homes-and-empty-proper...

Empty properties are not always exempted. It's up to the council. Sometimes they are, sometimes there's a discount, sometimes there's no discount, sometimes people have to pay extra for empty properties.

Applying it to freeholders of very-long-lease property would be a fiasco for all those "99 year lease" properties that behave almost, but not quite, like freehold.

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