Edit: by “own” I mean “have a non-paid off mortgage”, the tax on net wealth here actually disincentives paying off a mortgage early vs “leveling up” your debt/house.
I see your clarification. Question: In Norway, if you pay-off your mortgage, do you still owe annual taxes on your property? If so, how much? What happens if you don't pay property taxes?
One of the things that has always bothered me about home "ownership" is that, from my perspective, at least in the US, you never really own your home. You can pay off your mortgage, of course. However, if you stop paying property taxes you can lose your property in a forced sale.
That is not my definition of owning something. If it can be taken away, you do not own it. We have somehow been led to believe we can own property. I don't think that's the case. If you own your property it should mean that you can live there with zero income and have nothing to pay anyone except for the things you want to pay for (power, gas, connectivity, whatever).
Someone might say: We need taxes to pay for X. Well, sure. I get that. We should get that money through other means, not through a system where people work their entire lives to pay off a mortgage only to discover they will have to keep paying to "own" that home for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the distinction should be your residence vs. investment/rental property. Not sure. Haven't through it through much deeper than that.
I think we should tax land, but not buildings. Land shouldn't be horded and should be distributed to folks who are best to make use of it for societal's benefit.
The idea of building enough nest egg for retirement doesn't make sense to me, especially if we take the long term perspective. It only make sense because we age over time and thus get weaker and frail. If we were always healthy as a horse, then we would have periods in which we work for our living, but not permanent retirement.
land under cities and any density populated areas is area of human civilization, but usually not humane civilization, people tend to fix human artificially created problems with artificially created solutions usually creating new problems later
land shouldn't be hoarded if every national has his own piece of it guaranteed (only inheritable) then there is no legitimisation for hoarding more
but the piece should be big enough to let person feed himself from it
then the rest can be city land for lending by nation to companies and all the rest is the shared coowned land like forests for mushroom collecting, limited hunting or fishing
If no corporation or foreigner can hoard your land you fixed most of the problem already
we decide our health and lifespan with everyday choices at shop and choosing place of living, working and it's water, air and soil quality
ofc some of us get born with a better starting point but that's what maintaining common standards is for
saving in inflative currency is irrational itself
retirement system is a lottery game to keep people focused on working and paying taxes only, schooling to make obedient workers and alimentary system is a divorce maker to break society into individual atoms
it's to block any need to group spontaneously, plan own future yourself, organise organically and oppose actual system
people use their things best for themselves never for societal benefit especially that there is no one universal definition of societal benefit
if every person has own idea about it it means you would give big share to some individual(s) who would build their idea of societal benefit that could contradict majority's sense of their benefit and common benefit
btw if you make it uncommon it by definition becomes non common
but I still like your sense of need of meritocracy and helping those more capable - still most important part lacking here is keeping them bound with bottom of pyramid they come from and serve, sharing fruits if their skills so the bottom would proliferate yielding new exceptional units lifting everything up continuously.
We already subsidize home ownership by quite a bit. We don't need to subsidize it more.
Couldn't you use the same argument to say that poor people should pay more in taxes because they benefit more from it?
No. Their wealth doesn’t come from government provided services.
Clearly the wealthier you are, the more benefit you are getting from taxes because the government stops everyone else from taking your wealth.
For whatever it’s worth it looks like at least Sweden and Norway have property taxes. Didn’t check others.
China is an example of a country without them. Except you can’t own land in China. Your house is effective leased from the government. So not exactly an improvement.
What happens if you don't pay this? Can they take your home away and sell it? They can do that in the US, BTW.
But I don't really see how that could happen if you didn't also have a mortgage. You would easily be able to finance this, unless your property was also pretty much worthless. And if it was practically worthless you'd either not pay any property tax at all, due to deductibles, or pay basically nothing.
In Norway property tax (where applicable, it's up to local government) is measured as a percentage of the taxable value of primary residence. Usually 0,2 per mille or around that. The taxable value is less than the property value. It's a progressive scheme, everything below 10MNOK is measured as 25% of property value (marked value-ish), and 75% for everything over 10MNOK. For secondary houses the taxable value is set to the property value.
Depends on where you live. Some counties has property taxes, others do not. One reason for why Norwegians have lots of debt is that its subsidized since you can write off parts of the interests from your taxes. Also there is taxes on wealth, i.e the tax system incentivizes having debt.
Many states have some method of limiting increases, which helps you budget for the future costs, as long as the rules don't change. Some states, I think Nevada is one, have a program where you can pay an actuarial estimate and be set for the rest of your life as long as you don't move. Many states have programs where you can defer property tax payments until you move or die. Many also have programs specifically to low income seniors and people with disabilities.
> Some states, I think Nevada is one, have a program where you can pay an actuarial estimate and be set for the rest of your life as long as you don't move.
And, you can always have a tiered system, for example, 0% on the first 1 million, then 0.5% on the next 500k, etc. that way at least people can downsize to something that they can own.
... that you pay for the necessary law enforcement, justice, defense, etc.
Why do you expect those to be free?
I did not say anything about anything having to be free.
Since you brought it up. No, they are not free. We have to pay for them. My point is that I should be able to own my paid-off home. The government should not be able to take my property away because of taxes.
Payment for the services you mention should have no connection to home ownership. Everyone uses them. Everyone pays for them equally (with some consideration for low income individuals).
We need to stop thinking about taxing everything from farts to homes to pay for the running of society. Send everyone a bill on a monthly, quarterly or annual basis. We all pay for it. Don't tax my farts.
Suppose you own a home, free and clear, no mortgage, no property taxes.
Once a quarter, you receive a tax bill (calculated in whatever equitable way you prefer) to cover your share of the upkeep of our shared society.
What action do you propose society take if you choose not to pay that bill? There's basically three routes here:
1) Take no action. The quarterly tax system becomes a voluntary system, and those who continue to choose to pay feel more and more bitter towards those who don't.
2) Debtors prison. You owe money to the government, and they are permitted and expected to imprison you until payment is made (which, if you were relying on income for that payment, might pose challenges).
3) Confiscating your real wealth. If you do not voluntarily pay your quarterly tax, the government can compel you to, by taking it in the form of assets you hold.
Our current society has recognized (3) as the least bad option of the above. With your proposed movement to quarterly tax bills, but without a change in this overarching policy… the government will still take your house if you do not pay your taxes, even if those taxes are not "property" taxes and do not scale with the value of the property. What else can they take, in the end?
You are missing an entire family of methods that would work quite well and not lead to the kinds of problems periodic billing would engender.
Sales tax, VAT, etc. is one form of this.
And then, of course, there's income tax.
We have somehow lost control of the simple idea of the "village" getting together to pay for stuff by exploding into a system of thousands of different taxes nobody can keep track of. The end result is massive waste of resources, bad management, substandard results and large government organizations that are mostly incompetent at nearly everything they do.
My street has been repaved twice in 25 years. They tell me they are planning on repaving it yet again next year. This street is 25 years old. It was as close to perfect as one could get when I moved in, months after the built it. It was just as perfect just before they repaved it (twice). It is perfect now. And yet, they are going to do it again.
The financial waste on this one street alone is nothing less than vomit-inducing. They are doing this to keep unionized government-agency workers employed. Oh, yes, they tore-up and rebuilt our perfect sidewalks a few months ago. Absolutely and utterly unnecessary.
While I do recognize the idea of sending people a bill for taxes isn't great, sometimes I wish we had that, maybe for a year or so.
Why?
People have no clue whatsoever about how much of their money is being consumed by hundreds, if not thousands, of taxes they encounter on a daily basis. It would be fantastic to see one lump-sum bill show-up every month. I guarantee you voting decision would change radically after just a few months of that. What they are doing to the population through this explosions in taxes should be criminal.
I am replying to your comment proposing periodic billing…
A comment on HN isn't a full study of all available options and ideas along with comparisons of their effectiveness, consequences and probabilities of success.
Besides, given the impossibility of property taxes ever going away, this is very much on the category of...
If you don't own property, you might still benefit from these services. But they don't affect your net worth.
Depends on where you live. Property values could actually increase! Portland, Oregon, for example.
Disclaimer: Since so many these days have lost the capacity to recognize and accept it...that was a lame attempt at humor. Please don't lose your shit over it. This is called a "joke". Jokes were an accepted form of social interaction many decades ago.
Just because things need to be paid for doesn't mean it has to be through a property tax.
You have to be careful with that statistic. It's not that 80% of Norwegians own their own home, it's that 80% live in a home that is owned someone in the household. So if you have a single parent, who owns a home, with 3 adult children living in one house, that statistic would say those 4 people have a 100% rate of homeownership. All countries measure it this way.
For example, Singapore has a rate of 91%. However, adults tend to live with their parents until they get married. They'd love to move out before that, but rents are sky high in Singapore, so people tend to just live with their parents. It's also pretty common to have multi-generation households.
I could only find updated statistics from the EU[0], so there's no data on Norway, but if memory serves me right, Norway has even lower age than Sweden.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...