>A substantial part of your rent is property taxes.

Here.

Without determining elasticity, it's impossible to determine how much of that cost is flowing through or how much goes to impact margin.

You're making a pretty fundamental mistake. I am not speculating about the elasticity of rent. If taxes went to 0, would rent go down? Probably not.

So what?

The percentage of rent that is taxes is exactly the amount paid in taxes by the landlord. Period. It is an absolute number.

But if property taxes go up you'd still be paying the same rent. I don't see how it makes sense to say you're paying property taxes when they have next to zero effect on your cost of living.

> I don't see how it makes sense to say you're paying property taxes when they have next to zero effect on your cost of living.

Why do they need to have an effect on rent for you to understand that you're paying them?

Bobby gave Lisa $10. Lisa then gave $3 to Uncle Sam. What percentage of Bobby's money went to Uncle Sam? 30%. It's that simple.

It’s not Bobby’s money that went to the government. It’s Lisa’s.

>You're making a pretty fundamental mistake

No I'm not. This is pretty entry level econ material. Price elasticity is very well studied and there's plenty of resources to learn more about it.

- A substantial part of your rent is property taxes.

Without detailed analysis there's no way to know if this is true, or how true it is. It is entirely possible for an increase in taxes to lead to no increase in end prices or even a drop in rent prices. It's a complex system.

All property taxes are paid from rents unless the landlord is operating at a loss.

Landlords are price takers. Supply is fixed short/medium run so just charge the maximum people will pay. Property tax rates have next to 0 effect on that.