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Comment by midhhhthrow | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s a bit crazy you have to pay rent on a property you supposedly own. I mean, out of thousands of items people own, shelter is the most basic essential need in life and yet it’s taxed at such extreme levels even after you’ve already purchased it. And this is somehow accepted as normal in the “developed world”

I don’t have to pay yearly to keep my shirt or my beanie baby collection or play station. All the frivolous stuff is tax free

I understand you pay to be in high value areas like near major transit and cities. But there ought to be rural low demand areas where people can live without being surfs all the time

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I understand the sentiment, but some of it is necessary, when the city provides services including running sewer lines to the curb, electricity, telephone and cable lines. Also the capital investments for roads, maintenance equipment and so on, and the people who keep all this physical infrastructure running smoothly. Not to mention the police and firefighters who are there to prevent property damage or alleviate or quickly stop any property damage (and your life).

If you live in the middle of unincorporated land in the boonies, then property taxes are truly unjust, because what you pay via income, gasoline and other consumption taxes should cover the things you use.

Poor city planning and downright regulation is what causes those property (and maintenance) costs to rise in first place.

Gov is literally controlling supply (planning, permits, inspections) and demand (immigration, interest rates).

Whats even more ironic is social housing tends to not be built to the building code or maintained to safe level aka gov fails their own regulation.

Where I’m at gov makes you pay for future infrastructure like drainage they might install someday even if you make your own system!

It does not have to be on your house. Unless something more sinister is in play.

Property tax seems to me like the most fair of all taxes as the greatest value provided by the state is the enforcement of private property and ownership.

but this enforcement is utilized by all, for all property and ownership, not just people with land. Why is a land owner paying more taxes than say, a shareholder, or a gold hoarder?

Shareholders and gold hoarders pay too. Unless they don’t live in The country, or if they rent in which case they pay indirectly through what they pay to their landlord.

> if they rent in which case they pay indirectly through what they pay to their landlord.

a land tax is not recoup-able via higher rent. If the rent could be raised, the landlord has no reason not to raise it, so it makes sense that the rent is the maximum the market bears.

> Shareholders and gold hoarders pay too

they don't pay a % tax of the value of their holdings as tax annually. They pay only after they sell, and make a capital gains.

land is finite, valuable and non-fungible. beanie babies can be mass produced and are fungible.

> I understand you pay to be in high value areas like near major transit and cities. But there ought to be rural low demand areas where people can live without being surfs all the time

enter stage left: land value tax

> I think it’s a bit crazy you have to pay rent on a property you supposedly own.

I think you need to balance you view on what type of ownership this is. You own the land like a child living with their parents “own” their room. The government has allowed you to be the owner of the land yes, but you haven’t paid money to have them hand over their claim to the land fully to you. Your claim to the land is only secondary to your countries claim, and even when living on your land you are still within the country.

Your idea that you should pay nothing would have you not only paying the previous “owner” but also paying the country enough money to have them recognize your piece of land as a sovereign nation owned by you, and that sort of thing would have a cost that’s astronomical compared to just transferring the state recognized ownership between individuals.

Property taxes go towards funding local services (schools, police, etc) whose costs tend to be proportional to the population size as well as the local cost of living. How else would you suggest funding these services?

via income tax, and via VAT (value added tax - a flat tax across all transactions, aka a consumption tax).

Taxes also get levied when property sale makes you profit (capital gains tax). You also charge utility fees by location and service - a flat tax on such levied at the local level.

Why should someone who's property is worth more be forced to pay a higher tax for the local school, police, etc, when they don't consume more of those services?

Why should a person with a lot of money or a high income pay more for services? On average, they use much less of the services that actually cost big money than the people with lower incomes and less wealth?

A flat "resident" tax would obviously be the most fair. Everyone has equal rights to the roads, the firefighters, the libraries, etc so simply divide the budget by number of people and everyone pays their fair share.

Obviously that wouldn't be tolerable in contemporary America, but there is still something absurd about suggesting that because some houses in my neighborhood sold for more last year, that I should have to pay thousands of dollars more for the local government.

The massive inflation in city and state budgets due to soaring property taxes is a huge abuse of the middle class and transfer of wealth to the pork barrel of connected insiders profiting from government contracts, grants, etc.

Taxes should be on luxury items.

Like a big home?

Yes. You can say no taxes on anything up to 500k and then start property taxes at whatever percentage beyond 500k.

So states like Alabama would have nobody paying property taxes and in California everybody pays them?

it's a misnomer to say "property tax", as it's some hidden version of government provided utilities billed as property tax.

We get a city utilities bill, but its itemization shows trash, recycling, and water, but does not show police, fire department, road maintenance, which is lumped inside property tax.

seems really illogical to me too.

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