That’s my point - I’m not making any profit from my ownership of the shares

We aren’t taxing your profits. We are taxing you. That is the entire point of a wealth tax.

Personally, I wouldn’t tax all forms of wealth. I would ignore personal property, intellectual property, real property. I would only tax securities. I would drive the wealthiest among us to pull their excess wealth out of the securities markets.

I don’t have a problem with the richest among us acquiring all the luxury goods they could imagine. Want a mansion? Have 10. A yacht for every week of the year? Go nuts. Go put a bunch of carpenters and boatwrights to work.

The problem isn’t their consumption. The problem is their frugality: they aren’t buying those mansions, those yachts. They aren’t employing those carpenters and boatwrights. They are using their wealth only to purchase the means of acquiring more wealth.

Instead of buying the products produced by a factory, they are buying the factory itself, and taking a larger and larger share of its revenue.

The fact that we have nothing to systematically disincentivize this behavior is the root cause of economic disparity today. A wealth tax is a first real step in solving this problem.

The shares aren’t being taxed. The ultra-wealthy individual is being taxed on their “excess” wealth, which is held in the form of these shares.

Personally, I wouldn’t tax “all” wealth. It does us no economic harm for them to own a billion dollar mansion or yacht or other tangible asset.

I would only tax registered securities: the vehicles by which these individuals gain wealth. Every year they are worth more than 99.5% of the population, I would transfer a small percentage of their wealth-generating assets out of their hands, to be resold at government auction.

The net effect of this will be that the 99.5% of us will come to own a greater percentage of these wealth-generating assets.

deleted by creator

If the shares can be owned by you, they can be owned by someone who is not you. You don’t have to worry about liquidating them. We’ll go ahead and do that for you.

If your “private” company wants to stay “private”, they won’t secure funding from the ultra wealthy, or they will be ready to buy back your tax-shares at auction.

Yeah. Ok. Fuckity bye.

He needs a better doctor.

One who knows that an “anti aging vaccine” doesn’t go through the earlobe.

Might not even have underground sewage. This might be an “up flush” system, with a tank hidden under the stairs that pumps upwards into a sewer line.

have heard of owner financing situations, but they are generally looked down upon (risky).

Owner financing is far less risky than renting from that same owner. For both the seller/lender/landlord and the buyer/borrower/tenant.

how does rent to own work for multi family properties,

For duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, so long as the owner lives in one of the units, the whole property is eligible for the owner occupant exemption.

I also wouldn’t want to completely deincentivize renting because there are situations where it’s a better fit for people as long as they are not getting gouged or kicked out needlessly.

Land contracts will replace rental agreements.

A land contract is (initially) a rental agreement. The rent price is the monthly rate of a 30-year mortgage. The agreement is recorded with the county, like a deed, and for our purposes, this tenant would be considered the owner.

If you walk away in the first three years, the contract never becomes anything more than a rental agreement. You forfeit any equity you would have built, but you can walk away without additional repercussion.

If you stay for three years, your previous “rental” payments convert to “mortgage” payments, and you gain equity in the home. That equity becomes your down payment on the mortgage, and the agreement converts to a purchase contract with a private mortgage from your landlord, with 27 years left on the mortgage.

With the tax system I described, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert tenants to buyers under land contracts. Short-term tenants won’t see any significant difference, but long term tenants are helped into home ownership.

1. Condos are deeded properties. Convert the building from apartments to condominiums, and use land contracts instead of rental agreements. Anyone who stays longer than the initial period of the land contract begins to gain equity in their property.

2. The “stick” is the massively increased property taxes on residential properties, so that the exemption can be larger. I would say that San Francisco is an outlier, and should not be used as an example when considering a general rule. They will require special consideration.

Ah, I see. Yes, I only did some very brief research to verify the concepts matched; I didn’t delve into the specifics.

I would strongly discourage landlording of more than 3 units by extending the owner occupancy credit only to 1-4 unit properties. Apartment complexes could be divided into multi-unit condos, with the extra units able to be rented out by the owner.

Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes could all have an owner living in one of the units, making the whole property eligible for the owner occupant credit, while the other units remain available for rent.

Bringing this back to your comment, suppose instead of dividing a complex into individual units, we divided it into a “quadplex” condo. A single property consisting of 4 units. The owner of that property occupies the quadplex, making the quadplex-condo eligible for the owner-occupant credit. 3/4 of the apartments are still rentable.

there’d be a lot of poorly maintained buildings no one would want to actually own part of

Somebody is making money off of those poorly maintained apartment buildings now. Better that somebody be someone who is actually part of the community (and thus motivated to improve the property) than a hedge fund manager living on the other side of the country.

Nah, nonprofit state-run landlords

We have those. They run “Section 8” housing, which, in my area at least, is substandard housing in high crime areas, because those areas have the cheapest housing, and that’s what the state buys. They also currently have a 6-year wait-list in my area. You only have a fixed time you can live there. There is means testing, and strict rules on who can come and go.

The problem isn’t actually the “state run” part, though. The problem is the market in which the state is operating. Whatever approach we take, we need to fix that market first, and that’s what I’m talking about.

I don’t want to buy a house, I move around a lot…

I don’t think you understand what a “land contract” is. It gives you the flexibility you need from a rental agreement, without imposing rent on long-term residents of a property.

If you are only going to be living in the property for less than 3 years, it is a rental agreement. It is an agreement that happens to be recorded with the county, like a deed, which allows them to consider you an “owner occupant”.

The real differences are if you decide to stay there longer than 3 years. Your monthly payment was calculated by assuming principal, interest, taxes, and insurance on a 30-year mortgage, which is usually what you’re going to be paying in rent anyway.

If you stay at least three years, the agreement becomes a sale contract; you become the deeded owner; your equity becomes the down payment, and your former landlord becomes a private lender with those pre-existing terms.

If you leave before 3 years, you forfeit your equity, and the agreement functioned identically to a rental agreement.

You still get to live like a tenant, and move around as you like. You can unilaterally abandon the contract for any reason during that 3-year period. For you, nothing changes other than the words at the top of the agreement. Words that are important to your “landlord” as it saves him a lot on taxes, but that are completely irrelevant to you as a “tenant”.

But, if you do change your mind during that three year period, and decide you do want to become a homeowner, you’re already well on your way.

Alternatively, Duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes are all single properties, where the owner of that property can live on site, making the property eligible for the owner occupant credit. The other 1-3 units on the property are available to rent out. If you really want an actual rental agreement instead of a land contract, that is one option.

Yeah, many states have similar credits or exemptions for various purposes. From my brief research, it seems the STAR credit is not available to new homeowners. It’s only available to people who are grandfathered in. But, it works much like I describe: a credit for owner occupants.

Ohio has a “Homestead Exemption” allowing disabled and elderly homeowners to deduct $25,000 of the market value of their residence.

We can do the same thing for purposes of discouraging corporate and investor ownership of residential property, and encouraging occupant ownership.

Owner Occupancy credit against property taxes. Sometimes called a “homestead exemption”.

Basically, if you live in a house you own, you pay a vastly lower property tax rate. If you own a house you don’t live in, you pay a vastly higher property tax rate on that house, because you can’t claim the exemption.

When we establish this, “landlords” stop “renting” and become private mortgage lenders. They sell their homes to their former tenants, or issue “land contracts” (rent-to-own arrangements), and enjoy the lower tax rate on the property.

If they foreclose or evict, they pay the higher tax rate until they get a new “buyer”.

Don’t protect “renters”. The entire concept of “renting” needs to die in a fucking fire.

Instead, we need to jack up taxes on residential properties. Send them to the moon. $2000/yr? Fuck that: $2000/month.

But nobody actually pays these exorbitant rates, because we create an “Owner Occupancy Credit”. The tax rate is only high if the owner doesn’t live in the home.

What happens to renters? Do landlords jack up their prices to cover the increased property taxes? Or do they offer their tenants a private mortgage or a land contract, so they don’t have to pay the hiked taxes?

When they can make more money as a lender than as a landlord, they aren’t going to be renting anymore. Establish an owner occupancy credit, and “landlords” will be fighting tooth and nail to convert tenants into buyers.

(The actual tax rate should target an 85% owner occupancy rate. When more than 20% of the population is renting, the non-occupant tax rate is increased 1% per year. When less than 10% is renting, the non-occupant tax rate is dropped 1% per year. )

Recliner? I barely know 'er!

10 rows, 10 seats on each side: 2 sides.

10 * 10 * 2 = 200.

“Leaks” to news outlets are how campaigns get shit published without paying for advertising.