[matwood]

> This is great (although it's not enough) and more cities should do it.

Something similar is common in the US, and is typically framed as a homestead exemption. Basically, set a high property tax rate and if people prove their house is owner occupied give them a rather large discount. My property taxes are ~$1500/year because I live in my house. People who rent out or do not live there pay $6000-$8000/year in my neighborhood.

[tuna-piano]

There are two types of residents - owners and renters. The renter is just renting from a property owner, who will just pass on the tax. In this example, assume the mortgage payment is $1k / month.

1. If you own the home, you will pay $13,500 ($12k mortgage + $1500 taxes) per year.

2. If you own the home, and want to rent it to a tenant, you must charge the tenant at least $18,000 ($12k mortgage + $6k taxes) to break even.

Renters are in generally less wealthy than owners. Why have this extremely regressive tax? Why should the poor renter subsidize the rich homeowner?

[avn2109]

The point is to incentivize the populace to take on stable obligations, the proverbial two kids and a mortgage.

A stable, indebted population is a governable and docile population. Somewhere there's a great quote about how "any man with a cottage of his own and a yard will never be a revolutionary, he's too busy" but I can't find it right now.

[humanrebar]

Home ownership can also tie people down to a location when they should be considering relocating to places with more demands for their skills.

[aminok]

This is a typical unintended consequence of top-down economic planning. It turns out cookie cutter solutions imposed by fiat reduce people's welfare.

[tdaltonc]

A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.

That's a good reason to have the mortgage interest deduction. The real reason is that home owners vote, and promising them money is a good way to get them to vote for you.

[digi_owl]

More succinctly, homeowners do not riot.

Picked it up from a talk by David Harvey, but not sure where he got it from.

[tomjakubowski]

The Vancouver tax wouldn't affect properties rented under "long-term" (> 30 day) leases.

from TFA: "Principal homes, as well as properties that are rented for at least six months of the year on 30-day minimum leases, won’t be taxed."

I would be very surprised to learn that Vancouver renters who typically live in units with < 30-day leases turn out to be poor.

[sprocket]

I believe that the requirement for > 30 day leases is also an attempt to block the proliferation of AirBnB rentals, which the city doesn't look favourably upon.

ie) You can't claim your house has been occupied for 6 months because you've had 30 one-week AirBnB listings in there over a year.

[matwood]

You're completely ignoring the demand side. This tax, at least in my area, is a tax on the wealthy land owners. They could drop the tax to 0 tomorrow and rents will still go up.

[mmanfrin]

Because if you own the home and want to rent it out, that implies you own another home that you are paying those taxes on, or are otherwise renting yourself.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

How is that an argument for charging renters $6000 a year?

[stana]

"... property owner, who will just pass on the tax"

Rental market is more of a market than say, buying a house. It is very much determine by salaries people make in the area. Unlike buying a property, which also has the element of credit availability and willingness of people to borrow, you cannot borrow to pay rent. The point being, owner can TRY to price tax into the rent, but if this prices property too high it will not rent out.

(Edited: typo)

[abecedarius]

All of the landlords must pay the tax. This means a constant displacement of the supply curve from the untaxed state. The demand curve is unchanged. The new equilibrium depends on elasticity, but I'd be surprised if it doesn't end up with most of the cost passed on to the renter.

[emp]

You are thinking logically. It's not applied in Vancouver. I rent for just over 2k. If my place was put up for sale, it would be for just over 1 million. Factor in $300 a month strata fees, another $200 for insurance, if they owner has a typical long term mortgage they are renting for a loss. However they bought it 10 years ago, they have done well with the crazy appreciation.

[roel_v]

"Why should the poor renter subsidize the rich homeowner?"

He's not subsidizing, is he? The tax just goes to the government. Essentially it's an extra tax on renting.

[ianferrel]

If the renter pays a higher tax rate than the owner, and they both have the same right to government services, that could be seen as a subsidy.

[woofyman]

Landlords get their own subsidies. All maintenance and improvements are tax deductions. Plus they get to depreciate the property.

[WalterBright]

Suppose a business buys goods at $80 and sells them for $100. You're suggesting that his profit is $100 and he should be taxed on $100 income?

[majormajor]

That's how sales tax generally works, no?

(Which suggests that the cost gets passed along and so it is a hit to the renter.)

[tikhonj]

The part about higher taxes for people renting property out seems to amount to yet another subsidy for home ownership over renting—which is not obviously a good thing. A tax just on properties that are unused (ie not owner-occupied or rented) makes more sense to me.

[pbhjpbhj]

How about "rented by a local landlord with a small number of properties" to get a similar discount? This would also seem to attack the problems of limited property supply allowing the bourgeoisie to profit without work and of a lot of local money moving away because of property ownership by distant entities. Reasonable?

[kbenson]

Or allow deductions from this tax for landlords paying for maintenance or improvements, and an exemption if you can show that all maintenance requests were acted on within 30 days and resolved within 90 days (for those that keep their rentals in good shape). I think that might aim it more squarely at slumlords.

[toomanybeersies]

Is there no requirement for timely repairs in the USA (or at least in some states)?

Here in New Zealand, I can hand my landlord a 14 day notice to remedy, and if they don't fix the problem within 14 days (or at least start remedying, if it's a larger problem), then I can take them to the Tenancy Tribunal, where they can be ordered to, and sometimes even get fined punitive damages.

The same works the other way. If I leave the house in an unsatisfactory condition (e.g. not cleaning the property, not keeping the garden under control), then I can be given notice to remedy and taken to the tribunal if I don't fix it.

It's a win-win system, both parties can take action against the other for problems. The tribunal is not meant to be biased towards the landlord or the tenant (although in practice they tend to side with the tenant a bit more), and is a neutral third party. They usually try mediation first, before actually ordering people to do anything.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

A step further here in Australia, or at least in South Australia where I used to live - not sure about the other states...

If an essential service breaks (toilet, hot water system, plumbing, gas leak) and the landlord doesn't have it remedied in reasonable time frame, you can pay for the remedy and issue an invoice to the landlord (in practice you can withhold the same amount from rent).

Worded thusly: organise to have urgent problems fixed and give the landlord an invoice from an authorised repairer. A licensed professional must do the repairs and provide a report that states the cause of the problem and the work carried out.

A landlord may be breaking the conditions of an agreement if they learn of a problem and don't repair it within a reasonable time.[1]

I firmly believe this is how it should be, and that any reasonable person would agree this is fare.

1. https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/housing/renting-and-letting/ren...

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I live in Tasmania now, and yes, the equivalent legislation exists here too[1]

1. http://tutas.org.au/factsheet/repairs-maintenance/

[nommm-nommm]

No there is strong requirements for timely repairs in the US. They are all just local laws so they are varied by location. Landlord tenant laws are usually in favor of the tenant. In some places you can withhold rent until repairs are made. Enforcement can be an issue though and tenants may not know their rights. Not sure.of any state has a Tenancy Tribunal equivalent.

Anyway I am not aware of anywhere in the US where being a slumlord is actually legal or even being a semi-slumlord.

30 days for a maintenance request is absurd, well depending on the request, I guess.

[rhino369]

Homestead exemptions punish renters, which there isn't a compelling policy reason for.

[matwood]

No, it takes money from the owners of the property. Rents are market based more than anything else. I don't care if the tax is 0 or 100k, the owner can only rent for what he can find people to pay. In my area (a vacation spot and college town), they could drop the property taxes to $0 tomorrow and rents will still go up. A high tax does not even really set a price floor since the owner would rather get something than nothing.

[gozur88]

>No, it takes money from the owners of the property. Rents are market based more than anything else. I don't care if the tax is 0 or 100k, the owner can only rent for what he can find people to pay.

The subtlety you're missing here is the reduction in supply of rental units.

[nickff]

British Columbia punishes renters, as it taxes 'passive income' (i.e. rent), which discourages owners from renting out existing properties or building-to-rent.

[shawnee_]

> * British Columbia punishes renters, as it taxes 'passive income' (i.e. rent), which discourages owners from renting out existing properties or building-to-rent.*

There are so many incorrect statements in this sentence, I don't even know where to begin.

Taxing vacant properties does not punish renters. It "punishes" people who buy properties for speculation, or (as the AirBNB trend is going) attempt to control a piece of limited supply.

The purpose of taxing passive income (lazy landlords, rent collecting) more aggressively is because it is not actually work. It is technically wealth extraction. As a renter, 100 percent of your rent is a "tax" (it's not going to offset any of your long-term assets); and when you pay 70-90 percent of your income in rent as a tax (as many minimum wage workers do), it is massively difficult, if not impossible, to save enough to acquire any assets that help you build wealth. On the landlords' side, it's even easier to use all that extracted wealth (from poor people) to acquire assets that build wealth.

No, collecting rent is not work or a job. Even if you have a whole fleet of illegal immigrants scrubbing the toilets, throwing down cheap carpet, and painting the walls of your units every few years. The moment you enter the territory of needing to pay somebody else to manage your asset (even if it is "just" scrubbing the toilets after your AirBNB tenants or renters leave), you're entering passive income territory.

[RHSeeger]

> No, collecting rent is not work or a job.

I rent, by choice. My landlord takes the risk of owning the property, and I pay a premium for that. Something breaks, I make a call and it's his responsibility. Just because some landlords are bad people doesn't mean landlords are bad people in general. I appreciate the benefits I get from renting (and, to be fair, from having a good landlord).

By your logic, owning a small company with some employees is passive income and "bad", because you have people doing work for you. Some small company owners are bad people but that doesn't mean all of them are (and, in fact, we tend to consider them fondly from what I've seen).

[shawnee_]

My landlord takes the risk of owning the property, and I pay a premium for that.

You pay a premium so your landlord can take risk to get the most lucrative profits? Why, you are a benevolent renter, aren't you?

By your logic, owning a small company with some employees is passive income and "bad",

That is not at all what I said; your reading comprehension needs work. Owning a company with employees[1] means you are responsible for allocating the income into business profits among your employees. Most people who scrub toilets and wash sheets for AirBNB rentals are NOT employees or the owners of the properties. Along the same lines: the right way to treat employees involves giving them part ownership of the company they are working for, and thus they are rightfully entitled to some of the income from business-generating assets. Landlords do not do this. They farm out the work required to manage or maintain the assets, and demand the lion's share of the profit.

[1] There is a definite legal definition of "employee", and you don't seem to understand what that is. See the IRS's definition. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...

[RHSeeger]

The definition of employee had nothing to do with my point. Rather, I was saying that just because someone is in a purely "owner and manager" position doesn't make them a bad person for wanting some (or all) of the profits. The profits are what's left after you pay out what's necessary to run the (company, housing, whatever) and, as owner, you get to decide who/what that money goes to. As long as you're paying the people that do the work for you (and it doesn't matter AT ALL if they're employees, contractors, or other) a fair amount, you're doing fine in my book.

> Why, you are a benevolent renter, aren't you? To some extent yes. I believe my landlord charges me enough to cover what it costs him to pay for/maintain the place I live, plus some amount for the risk he takes on in owning it (major repairs, etc), plus some amount of profit that I find reasonable. Not all landlords set <some amount of profit> at unreasonable levels.

[Joky]

If I own a house but I have a new job far away and I rent a house there and have a tenant in the one I own, that's a zero-sum game (assuming the rent I pay is equivalent to one I get from my tenant). The owner of the house I'm occupying could even be the tenant of my own house. How do you justify economically taxing the rented home more than if we occupied our own?

[will_hughes]

Maybe I misunderstand the taxation that BC is applying, but why should 'passive income' be taxed or treated any different to regular income for taxation purposes.

i.e if I earn $100 by working at a job, and $100 through renting out a property, shouldn't I be taxed the same as if I earn $200 through my job instead?

[TallGuyShort]

I'm also concerned about how arbitrary the line is between passive and active income. Let's say I rent out a lot of properties. I have legal obligations to maintain those properties. That might be a lot of work. A full-time job, even. Let's say I make a lot of money on investments. I might be ensuring the success of those investments by advising and doing research on / for the companies I'm investing in. Both of those things get called passive income, but they very well might not be in reality.

[skewart]

Me too. Distinguishing between passive and non-passive income seems in any kind of technical, legal seems incredibly difficult. It reminds me of the old "I know it when I see it" definifinition of pornography, which is a terrible definition for a law.

I'm actually really curious about the law now. Stock dividends must be considered passive income. So would interest from your local bank savings account. So would a SaaS app that you set up and basically runs itself with minimal maintenance.

[SilasX]

Very true! Given a sharp enough tax rate difference between two kinds of income (or two activities), you just generate a ton of socially-useless work aimed at blurring one into the other.

[sdenton4]

The term rent selling stats with 'rent' for a reason. The maintenance on any single property is miniscule compared with the rent extracted. Added over many properties, sure, might be a lot of work. But you're also getting a lot of rent.

The bigger part of the problem is the tendency to pass on the tax on passive income to the tenant.

[will_hughes]

This is also why when someone has enough capital to buy enough properties to extract a full-time wage out of the rent, you can be sure they're also not going to be doing the work themselves.

They'll offload it to a property manager/real estate agent to do all that work.

[nickff]

I don't know why the BC government makes this distinction, but it does. The $100 from working at your job is taxed at a lower rate than the $100 from renting out a property, though I should add that there are various schemes to avoid paying the 'passive income' tax.

[sdm]

This isn't actually the case now is it? Are you confusing corporate income tax with personal income tax? Normally if you're renting a place out you'd be doing it through a hold co. As the rental income would be your main business income it would be tax at the very low Canadian Controlled Small Business rate; not the general rate.

Even if you were to take the unwise, for both legal and tax reason, choice to not use a hold co, income from rent is FUNDAMENTALLY different from regular income. In that, if you make a loss, you can claim it. That's just not possible with regular income. I.e., if you rental unit is unprofitable, it reduces your taxes in general -- potentially applied in future years. This is not the with "active" income.

[dangjc]

In a simple math world yes, but tax policies consider other factors like social equity, disincentivizing work/investment, compliance likelihood, etc.

[roel_v]

"passive income" is not a tax term. Are you saying there should be a capital gains tax at the same rate as income taxes?

[SilasX]

The concept of passive income is used in tax laws, though in the US the term is "unearned income" (a term I really don't like).

[caretStick]

Why not? Someone working their ass off for $300k shouldn't pay more tax than someone banking $300k in "long term" capital gains.

[hhw]

There's no such tax on 'passive income', it's just taxed as business income, which is exactly what it is and taxed no higher than employment income. It's just not taxed as capital gains nor has dividend tax credits, which it shouldn't be/have.

The only tax that discourages renting out is that the portion of your principal residence used for renting out no longer qualifies for tax-free capital gains.

Considering how almost nobody in BC ever declares this, and barely anything is done to curb it, it's kind of a moot point.

[snrplfth]

Which is one reason why condo ownership is so ubiquitous there.

[nickff]

Yes, the tax on 'passive income' discourages apartment buildings.

[mstodd]

There's no good reason for any of this other than simply being able to take more money from people. It's wrong for the government to pick who wins and who loses, and never works how it's sold.

[Spooky23]

Renters are a net drain on any city. It's always a smart move to incentivize ownership.

Making rentals more expensive pulls in more Federal money in low income property and encourages purchases by middle class families.

[Trombone12]

How is it similar? The tax Vancouver is introducing applies if the house is empty, and the tax you describe is concerned with differentially taxing non-empty houses.

[gozur88]

Isn't the net effect of something like that to drive up the price of rent?

[meganvito]

I guess you are not in California.

[diego]

Interestingly California has a homestead exemption but it's a joke (capped at $70).

[malyk]

Oakland has a $7000 homestead exception. It actually just takes $7000 off the "value" of the property for taxation purposes.

https://www.acgov.org/assessor/decreasetax/exemptions/homeow...

[diego]

Right, I live in Oakland. This is a state exemption. In other parts of the state it may be meaningful, but if you (like me) bought property in the Bay Area in the current millennium then it's insignificant.

[matwood]

Heck no! I don't make enough money to live there in a way I would enjoy.

[cloudjacker]

If you like camping you'll enjoy San Francisco

[mmanfrin]

Not since the 8th, though.

[meganvito]

Is it because the Berkeley dudes ain't that hippy any more?

[mmanfrin]

http://voterguide.sfelections.org/en/prohibiting-tents-publi...

[cloudjacker]

Oh cool, how can I find the sf results? Not interested enough to google it thanks for the public service!

[hyperbovine]

There is also a capital gains penalty (15% of net gain) when you sell an investment property.

[kspaans]

You pay capital gains tax on all capital assets you sell, with the notable exception of your primary residence. There is no reason to call it a "penalty".

[hyperbovine]

You can exclude the tax under certain ownership conditions even if it is not your primary residence. Tomāto tomăto.