Hacker News Reader

I think it means that if you are registered as a resident in Tallinn, the national government gives the Tallinn municipality €1,000 a year from your income tax. I don't think you notice it yourself, your tax doesn't change (assuming you were already paying estonian income tax).

you'll notice it by reduced services since that 1000 euros is being moved to public transportation from what it used to be. My guess is that soon you'll see tax rates rise to match the shortfall.

And this is all assuming the public transport will be useful and efficient, instead of being the bare minimum of what is available and chronically underfunded and underrepaired. That stuff is capital intensive and expensive, which bureaucrats will soon find out to their chagrin.

I doubt they are spending €1000/resident on public transit...

> So that's more like €83 per month public transit. In comparison, a 30 day pass in Tallinn costs €23, or €8.50 for students.

You are comparing the total cost with the heavily subsidized end user price, which doesn't make any sense.

What a scheme like this does is move all of the cost to the subsidy, instead of just most of it, by eliminating the end user price.

I'm comparing the options given. Perhaps they should raise the monthly price for non-residents from €23 since there's no reason for residents to subsidize it.

Note that non-residents probably already bring in enough money to the economy to cover the cost of some bus/tram rides, even if they're not explicitly charged for them.

This was done so that people from neighboring municipalities who commute to Tallinn and would like to not pay for the public transport would register themselves as residents of Tallinn and the local municipality share of income taxes (roughly half iirc) would go to Tallinn instead of the others. The price for the 30 day pass was significantly raised as well.

In this light the taxes are redistributed, Tallinn local government has been incredibly corrupt (but strangely functional and with moves like this pretty bold and not dumb) and so one could argue that there has been more theft through corruption but that would assume that the neighboring municipalities are less corrupt, which is not exactly given.

As the goal is to entice people to register as Tallinn residents the tracking part of the plan is absolutely vital.

So in the end this is still a zero sum game or even net negative as it accelerates regional income and by extension brain drain.

When you rip off good social services they end up not working for anyone.

If you don't agree with it, don't move there. Society doesn't need people like you.

>When you rip off good social services they end up not working for anyone.

I think the ones doing the ripping off are the ones charging €83 for a €23 service then calling it "free". Then again, there could be other benefits to registering as a resident of Tallinn, so I don't know.

>If you don't agree with it, don't move there. Society doesn't need people like you.

I don't plan to move anytime soon, but what's stopping the current residents from putting 2 and 2 together? I think society needs more people who know to read the fine print.

Personal income is taxed at 20% and collected by the central government no matter what. Half of that is then transferred to the municipality you're registered in. Personal income tax makes up approximately half of a municipality's budget and covers far more than only transport-related expenses.

Such scheme incentivizes municipalities to compete with other municipalities and offer their residents all kinds of benefits ranging from childcare to public transport to keep them registered there.