The fact that we can tax houses, the main form of wealth for most people, proves that wealth taxes (levied on other forms of wealth) would be just fine.
What alternatives are there to owning a home or renting one from someone who owns it?
All you can do is economize on how much home you use, and where it is (where fewer people want to be), which we have seen happen over the past 2-3 decades. So I think we are feeling the pressure of this wealth tax, along with inflation, global competition, and other factors in the real estate market.
This is a pretty complicated matter. In principle, a government could do this. There would then be an invisible tax in the form of high inflation.
High inflation causes practical and psychological problems and undermines the appearance of stability of a currency. For one thing, it would be terrible to save any money. So fungible assets like stocks or foreign currency would see a disproportionate demand. You'd be buying and selling stocks just to buy some groceries or a car. Any event like COVID that creates more demand on savings would send the stock market crashing.
Another aspect is that the government would lose the ability to manipulate tax policy. Charity would have no special status, strategic industry would have to be directly subsidized, etc. Government would lose an important lever.
There also would be little reason to accept payment in this government's currency. Why accept the government's rapidly inflating currency when you have no taxes to pay in that currency and would prefer to transact in a stable currency? Why accept a government contract denominated in their own inflationary currency?
With just a "slight" difference in that you do not have pay taxes on the gains you made on your house (what you paid vs. what it is worth now) when you sell it and you are paying HEFTY property taxes on your current home worth each and every year. Very poor analogy...
> and you are paying HEFTY property taxes on your current home worth each and every year
Is there any jurisdiction where the assessed value of a home is anywhere close to its market value? (You're still correct. But OP's observation, that this is the stock equivalent of a reverse mortgage, is moreso.)
Pretty close in British Columbia. When you adjust for month to month shifts in the market (aka everyone's homes have appreciated X% since the last annual property tax assessment) the vast majority of sales occur within 5% of the adjusted assessed value. (And many of the ones which aren't within that range are wildly different because e.g. the property assessment was on an empty lot and the property is now being sold with a house on it.)
I have a rental condo in DC and a house in Northern VA, both are assessed within 10% of what the current market value, DC condo slightly over-assessed, house in Northern VA slightly under-assessed
> do not have pay taxes on the gains you made on your house (what you paid vs. what it is worth now)
Absent a few exceptions, at least in the US you very much do have to pay capitol gains on the increase in value of your house when you sell it. And those exceptions typically amount to a deferral of the tax rather than a "tax free" gain.
The one sure way to not pay capital gains on one's house is to hold it until you die, and then your heirs get the 'step-up' basis and they don't have to pay tax on your gains, but will have to pay tax on the gain they accrue while they hold it.
Yea, you do if you make over 250k in profit but you can roll that over with 1031. Still cannot see how home equity can be compared to borrowing against securities - there are a TON of taxes that we pay for owning a home and none for owning a security...
> Still cannot see how home equity can be compared to borrowing against securities
Home equity: borrow money with the home used as collateral - if you default on the loan the bank takes your house to make themselves whole again.
Borrow against securities: borrow money with the securities used as collateral - if you default on the loan the bank takes your securities to make themselves whole again.
The fact that the house also comes with an attached "ownership tax" that the securities do not include does not change the fact that it is the exact same type of "borrowing".
I would agree with this statement 100% if I was also hiding from the government the fact that I own a home when they came to collect property taxes. Since I am not this argument does not hold water.
>With just a "slight" difference in that you do not have pay taxes on the gains you made on your house (what you paid vs. what it is worth now) when you sell it
There's ways around that through 1031 exchange but yea, only first 250k come home free. my argument still stands though that comparing HELOC to borrowing against stock is a poor analogy
Only if the properties are both used for "trade, business or investment" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code_section_...). Since your primary residence is not classified as "investment" by the IRS, you can't use a 1031 exchange to defer gains on your primary residence.
And a 1031 is a deferral (see cite above), not a "tax free" swap. If you eventually sell without going through yet another 1031 exchange, all the deferred gains become taxable at that point.
> you can't use a 1031 exchange to defer gains on your primary residence
who says it would be my primary residence when I am about to sell... you never sell your primary residence unless it is an emergency, you move first and make it an investment property and then sell and roll over ...
> If you eventually sell without going through yet another 1031 exchange
You don't of course ever do that. And all this should be in a trust of course...
"In addition, a special punitive rule applies to convert gain otherwise taxable as capital gain to ordinary income. If the property sold or exchanged (a liquidation is treated as a sale) between related parties is depreciable by the buyer (regardless of whether the property was depreciable by the seller), § 1239 requires any gain recognized on the sale or exchange to be treated as ordinary income."
