Rhode Island's tax on vacation homes of the wealthy is spreading to other states
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Personally, I grew up in a coastal town in the South East that is too expensive to raise my family in. The problems are jointly migrants from HCOL areas with remote jobs, and AirBNB investors. Currently, the housing stock in the area is 1/5th AirBNB.
This particular tax strategy would largely do nothing for locals in a middle or lower income categories and their ability to live in the area. It would simply raise more money for the government.
(Muni bonds typically have favorable tax treatment for investors vs corporate bonds)
Hasn't means tested social welfare basically been proven to be bad in every way, regardless of political or economic belief system used to analyze it?
There are lots of positive things that can be done to improve affordable housing - removing impediments to housing density like allowing multiple units on a lot, increasing building height limits, removing parking spot requirements, removing requirements for extra staircases, lowering property taxes, and removing bureaucratic approvals that are full of secret bribery and favortism.
But just stealing money from one set of people to give someone else below-market rent doesn't fix the systemic issues at all, and creates perverse incentives where people are locked into semi-poverty to keep their means tested housing.
Society is not made better by someone refusing a higher-paying job because it would mean they no longer qualified for their apartment.
[1] HN Search: vienna housing - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
"money for the government" is a very weird way of saying "funding for public services".
> This particular tax strategy would largely do nothing for locals in a middle or lower income categories
There is no basis for saying this. Who it helps and how is a spending consideration, not a taxing consideration. Where the budget goes has exactly nothing to do with how the budget is gathered.
From the article: "Brokers say some second-home owners are considering selling". At the very least this plausibly means per-capita resupply of available housing and consequently lower overall market prices. It benefits everyone in lower wealth classes all the way down the chain when wealthy individuals are disincentivized from collecting more properties than they can personally occupy at a time.