How are old people with no income supposed to afford capital gains taxes?
And if house prices go down do they get a refund?
And if house prices go down do they get a refund?
There is very little controversy over not taxing unrealized gains when it comes to income tax [1]. I'm not sure why doing the same thing for unrealized gains in property value is controversial.
It's not like most of the things property taxes pay for are proportional to the value of the property. The changes each year in costs to provide roads, schools, libraries, police and fire, and utilities to my house and my neighbor's houses generally has little to do with the changes in the market value of our homes. So why should the taxes that pay those things be tied to market value of the house?
More sensible would be to take the costs to provide the services the tax pays for, and divide it among the houses that receive the services, equally or taking into account usage (e.g., the amount for sewer might be proportional to the number of bedrooms). If we want it to be a progressive tax, apportion it according to the relative market values of the properties, but determine the total amount for the neighborhood solely by how much money the tax needs to raise to provide the services used by that neighborhood.
[1] There is controversy over tricks and schemes used to effectively realize them while escaping taxation.
Exactly! The extraordinary taxes on property are a result of unfair distribution of cost of services. A city needs to collect for a budget of $X... so they distribute the costs the best they can.
Don't assume. That person had to live somewhere, possibly at equally inflated prices. Now add in the the cost of two unnecessary moves.
> and if you sucked it up and paid the state? Maybe you had a sick family member that you were taking care of and the chaos of a move would have been too much to deal with. Sorry, chum. Bad luck of the draw.
The other program some counties around here do is property tax exclusion for low income seniors.