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Comment by cies | Hacker News Reader

Tax on labour (or housing) is quite weird if you look at it with fresh eyes. Don't we want to support people working and living in a house? Then why tax those? Is it a relic from the past?

Thought experiment: what if we (only) tax pollution? All taxes end up being paid by the consumer anyway. But this get the incentive straight to deliver products/services "cleanly".

Just a thought...

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"Taxing housing" isn't weird at all. We don't tax housing. If you rent, you pay rent to your landlord and that's it. You don't also pay taxes on that rent to the government. I'm guessing what you actually mean is that we tax property. This seems inherently fair to me. Why should you get to squat on a piece of land for free in perpetuity, especially when for most land, the value of the land is inherently improved by government-provided services?

Semi-related ... I feel like we should tax rent-seeking way more than we do. Selling a piece of property/house is one thing, but to extend your metaphor, why should one get to seek rent on a piece of property in perpetuity (if the tenant stays long term)?

Of course, I understand how valuable short-term living arrangements are for a number of reasons; my issue is with long term landlords, who can evict a tenant who's been there for decades at any whim ... and they reap the profits, while the tenant is out on the streets with nothing to gain from their many years of payments.

Most paces have some tax for living there, usually related to the worth of the house. Weather that's collected at the owner or at the rent-payer, that's not the point as "all taxes are transferred to the consumer" anyway.

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