[lazide]

By 'lose the land', really they'd be forced to sell or go bankrupt/accrue tax debt.

Which is pretty terrible if the folks are little old ladies settling down to avoid the cruel harsh world, and now need to find somewhere else to live when they are least capable of doing so (being on a fixed income and all).

The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be, btw. Even without Georgist taxation, property taxes got too high to pay. I imagine a lot of folks in Texas and other less dense areas are going through this right now due to the rapidly increasing property values and less controlled changes in taxation.

It does cause change and turnover instead of stagnation in an area though.

[curun1r]

> The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be

There’s a better way to handle this, though, than the Prop 13 approach of limiting taxes. You just allow a certain amount of property taxes to optionally go unpaid and accrue as a lien against the property that must be settled when the property changes hands. Old widows never get forced out of their houses, but they don’t get to leave them to their kids without paying the tax.

[entangledqubit]

... or you accept that the widow argument was a bogus special interest ploy to begin with and have people who genuinely need a prop 13 style exemption apply for an exception - rather than have it apply to everyone. From what I understand, Seattle does it this way.

[jjav]

> ... or you accept that the widow argument was a bogus special interest ploy

It's not either/or. The old lady (old guys don't like to be kicked to the street either) argument was very real and causing a lot of pain for real regular people.

It's also true that the special corporate interest saw an opportunity and sneaked in to a law that never should've applied to them.

[lazide]

How is everyone going to get rich then?!?!

[bilbo0s]

Your suggestion is not bad, but I like HN User "stickyricky"'s suggestion better. It's more all encompassing. Would certainly be nice to maybe stack this on top of his suggestions.

[Aunche]

>The 'can't put old widows out of their homes' scenario is why California's Prop 13 came to be

That's the Prop 13 lobbyist's excuse. In reality, these old widows are never at risk of being kicked out of their house at all. I'm sure plenty of investors would be willing to pay off the widow's taxes in exchange for ownership of the property after they pass.

[salawat]

Which guarantees the centralization of assets in the hands of a monied few. You might as well just write carpetbagger on your forehead. It's quite clear the outcome you're vested in. The entire concept of an estate existing to anyone but the already well-heeled would become even rarer than it is now.

If you want to invest, go solve a problem that isn't creating a predatory pressure on the real estate market. Homes and property should be affordable. Not investment vehicles, or somewhere to hide cash from that nasty inflation.

[Aunche]

What a ridiculous assertion. Either you're a carpetbagger yourself or you're simply completely ignorant to economics. We're talking about the most progressive form of taxation here that most affects the wealthy. Any revenue generated from land taxes is revenue that doesn't have to taxed from income or sales, so regular people would be able to accumulate a much larger estate to begin with.

>Not investment vehicles, or somewhere to hide cash from that nasty inflation.

Exactly, which is the point of disincentivizing people of treating it as an investment...

[lazide]

For Boomers, their homes are one of the few investments they've done as a class that has actually paid off. It's the source of the 'millionaire next door' and the basis of a large portion of that generations nest eggs.

Oops.

[mjmahone17]

Unless the laws are bad, if property taxes are going up to the point you can’t afford them, why wouldn’t you rent out enough of your high value property to pay them, and live in the rest? That might mean building an ADU or a multi-family unit where you live in one of them, but I don’t see why “people will need to move when their homes rise in price” is a legitimate argument. Unless the laws prevent you from both living on and also making money from owning the same land.

[lazide]

The laws mostly prevent this yes. Either from zoning, or logistics. Not many single income retirees can pull off constructing an ADU on their own property.