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Comment by practicalpants | Hacker News Reader

Wealthy people minus a few eccentrics are most certainly not parking their money in NFTs. The crazy $69MM Beeple headline was actually a purchase by an NFT related company from what I understand.

Not withstanding unoccupied real estate investments are a problem in every major city. It's usually wealthy foreign investors living far away in particular...e.g. Russia -> London, China -> Singapore/Vancouver, etc. really seems like non-occupied real estate purchases by foreign capital ought to be restricted a bit legally

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While not good for the local housing market for sure, the country does gain from a ton of foreign illicit income being converted to its own currency and an easily seizable asset conveniently parked within its borders.

Cities and counties can also implement vacancy taxes and such to somewhat lessen this problem.

How does it benefit uk to launder proceeds of crime and squeeze productive citizens out, forcing them to travel further and pollute more?

That's only true of the property actually is siezed (or taxed) and put to good use, which it isn't, because it's not nation vs nation so much as it's global ultra wealthy vs global everyone else.

The simplest answer is land value tax

Except that’s explicitly discouraging vacant lots and encouraging tall buildings. These owners can afford the tax better than anyone.

But I do want to discourage vacant lots and encourage tall buildings, that’s seems the feature. We have only so much land and a large amount of people who want to live on it, increased density is the solution.

If they can afford the tax that's fine. At least then the inhabitants of the city get value out of the empty apartment buildings. Hell, it can be used to build other apartment buildings that aren't empty.

LVT turns an asset into a liability. The fact that they can afford it isn't the point. They won't want to afford it if it's a liability unless they live in it or can rent it out.

Meanwhile city coffers fill up with cash that can be used to build social housing.

The only downside to LVT on non primary residences is the epic political fight it would require against the super rich.

How do you know they would pay more property tax than now? These skyscrapers are very tall and thin. They use very little land and the tax would be divided up among many floors.

If you wanted to design a building to pay as little land tax as possible, this is what it would look like.

They use a small amount of some of the most valuable land in the United States.

They also purchased "air rights" from neighboring buildings.

Their LVT bill (assuming air rights were also taken into account) would not be small.

It seems that people also don't actually like living in them. It's particularly noteworthy that they're speaking out about it because they're risking doing real damage to their investment by doing so. That's a sign that they really don't like it.

If it were built primarily as a place to live rather than as an investment I don't think it would look the same at all. There would be far greater emphasis on livability, less on views and probably a much lower height.

Whatever the land value tax is, neighboring buildings will pay far more, because they use more land and there are fewer floors to spread the tax over.

A LVT increases the cost per square foot more for shorter buildings. A 10 story building pays about twice as much on a square foot basis as a 20 story building. The whole point is to encourage taller buildings.

(It’s not quite that simple since taller buildings probably have less usable square footage per floor, but that’s basically how it works.)

Not sure why you want to encourage empty lots?

Yes these owners 'can afford' more but it will definitely discourage what OP was talking about that it's just land banking for future asset appreciation. The land value on this kind of property is extremely high so tax is not low even if it's a tall building

I think it’s fine to discourage vacant lots, but the skyscrapers we are talking about are the opposite of a vacant lot.

Whatever the tax on these buildings is under LVT, it will be more unaffordable by their neighbors that are shorter and use more land. There is a higher incentive for neighboring buildings to get torn down and get replaced by taller skyscrapers like these.

It’s just odd to point to the buildings least affected by the tax as the sort of development that would be discouraged.

In Switzerland, everyone that owns real estate has to pay income taxes on the rent they would earn on the property.

It has also the benefit that owning a home doesn't get preferential tax treatment than renting.

Income from wealth should be treated as normal income, it shouldn't matter if you consume the income yourself or receive cash for it.

Switzerland also has a wealth tax. So parked money are taxed this way as well.

> Wealthy people ... are most certainly not parking their money in NFTs

The comment you're replying to didn't say they were.

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