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Comment by pastacacioepepe | Hacker News Reader

Explain how would you tax them effectively then, since they are foreign.

Every time I talk about taxing the rich, I'm stormed by people calling me economically illitterate and telling me it's impossible as the rich will always find a loophole.

So if you think they can find loopholes on the ban, why couldn't they find loopholes on new taxes? They do already and very effectively.

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Why would it be hard if they are foreign? They literally have a substantial asset in your country.

As an aside, bans are also very exploitable. Can't buy cause you're foreign? Put it in your cousin's name. Buy or start a tiny company that will technically own it. Get some kind of visa, maybe one that you can get because you have lots of $. etc.

A % tax on the cost of the property would be pretty simple. Can't buy without paying the tax up front. It's usually the more complicated taxes that have exceptions to rules that are exploitable. It's hard to find exploits in simple rules.

I mean yes but then you'd also hit your population, unless you restrict the tax to non-citizens, but then foreign investors can still use some sort of a front man or other loopholes.

Hitting the local population with this particular tax is fine from an economic point of view.

Just use the tax take to finance local goods and service and to lower other local taxes.

Yes. Look at land value taxes.

Btw, I would _not_ charge a transaction tax. Charge them every year for holding the property. (Eg charge whoever holds the property on New Year, the market will do the rest.)

That way you don't impede transactions.

Targeting foreign investors is both difficult and morally wrong. You want to target speculators (landlords) regardless of nationality.

And it's easy to implement: tax houses not owner-occupied very heavily.

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