The way people in the US plan for old age and retirement, and the way they are treated by society, is terrible and property taxes are aspect of that. But the only way you should be able to own land tax free is if there are no government services provided on that land. No utilities, no public road, no emergency services, no municipal services. I don't know of anywhere in the US where that is an option. Unless you're saying you want that funding to come from a different source, which would mean a total restructuring of the tax system in the majority of localities.
I live in a town like this. 'Roads' are actually reciprocal easements to allow all other land owners to pass. Each lot has water well and septic, though one group of houses has a large shared water system which pools the individual well permits.
Electricity and gas and internet are private companies using an easement.
Police and fire can easily be funded by sales tax, just like the public transit. Alternatively, land owners can voluntarily pay yearly for police and fire, or opt-out just like people are not forced by government to buy homeowner insurance.
If you don't mind me asking, where do you live? Because my area is very similar, but all 'reciprocal easements allowing owners to pass' are all based on county/state law, and enforced via such. Anything paved, tar/chipped, graveled, or traveled via dirt is a county road and subject to county maintenance and oversight.
An easement is a form of a property contract, not a law. It is enforceable in court by parties to the easement.
Maybe look into the lot lines and confirm if they extend through the 'road'. Then go to county clerk and recorder and find what easements were filed there. Lots of misunderstanding about this, even in local government.
Have those laws been tested? Published appellate cases specific to the law may be very interesting. An encumberance or taking requires compensation.
Also, be careful to not use motor vehicle laws and words like 'drive', as you can do what you want on private property. My child was practicing use of movement via a personal conveyance when 11 years old, in what looks like a car on what looks like a road.
Incorporate a town and do what you want. After incorporating, set up contract to pay county to do maintenance until the town has time to bid it out.
Curious thing here is that with the limited ability of the town to meddle, town council election is occasionally cancelled because it is not contested. There is little to fight over, so not a lot of grift or power.
Wait, why on earth is the article advising you to flee from a black bear? You literally cannot outrun a black bear- I've driven along side one that was running parallel to the road at around 30 miles an hour.
If there aren't cubs around, you yell, clap and raise your arms. It'll run in a heartbeat. If there are cubs around, you back away slowly- running will just make it chase you. If it follows, stop moving.
That's when you play dead, to get used to how you'll be in a minute.
Realistically, it is a game of chicken. If you stop, you're signaling to the bear that you aren't intimidated. As long as it has an escape route, it'll back down.
Brown and black, though not grizzly. The moose are more dangerous.
There are benefits to shared services, the question is how to fund the services and if it should be voluntary.
Sounds quite nice to me. A good example of how private agreements such as easements can solve a lot of problems that people think require "government" solutions.
Yes, get rid of property taxes and completely overhaul the tax system. You could easily replace property taxes with a VAT which I would find much preferable because it’s more flexible. Illinois property taxes robbed my family of a farm that had been in our family for 200 years. My grandparents simply couldn’t afford $20k in taxes every damn year. Patently absurd.
That's obviously not ideal for your family, but it's precisely what property taxes (or more directly a land value tax) is designed to do. If your grandparents couldn't use the land in a way that covered the property taxes, then the argument is that the use of the land is likely inefficient and it would be better overall if the land was being used more productively. It sounds like the system did exactly what it was supposed to do.
Edit: not to mention that VAT and sales taxes are considered regressive taxes that disproportionately burden the less wealthy. I would much quicker remove VAT than property taxes.
It's Illinois. The state is a financial disaster. They are jacking property taxes because they don't know of any other way. Certainly spending less and rooting out the massive systemic corruption do not appear to be on the table.
It may be what property taxes are designed to do but the social agreement that allows them is that taxes are designed to raise funds, not force people out of their homes. The Romans tried this. They ended up with their citizen farmers walking off the land because of the taxes, and ended up going from some of the most advanced farmers to not being able to feed themselves.
I experienced VAT in Europe for some years and it is an overly complex sales tax. Simply have a sales tax which excludes uncooked food at grocery stores and excludes tax on some reasonably small amount of household energy each month. Then delete other taxes.
Why not solve it like social security? You pay in over most of your life, then retire. If you call the fire department after you’ve retired, they’ll still come because you spent a life time paying into it.
For the same reason that I'm planning my retirement without social security. Politicians can't be trusted long term. They'll write laws to allow them to use funds that were previously protected.
The traditional (neoclassical economics) view is that taxes pay for services, but that's not how it really works. The federal government buys these services with money it creates, and then only later does it tax it back.
For state an local governments this is mostly true but even there the federal government helps out.
What you want is for the wealthy to pay for the poor and old and those without much wealth or income.
> tax free if there are no government services provided on that land
You're still giving the "it's property" framing waaay more credit than it's due. Remember, granting someone exclusivity to a contested resource means preventing other people who would like to use the resource from using the resource. It's entirely reasonable for those people, represented in aggregate by the government, to ask for compensation in return, even if the government provided the landowner no additional services beyond the exclusivity.
The entire concept of "owning" land is just a hustle to argue against paying taxes on it.
Maybe we should be honest and say that you can't "own" land? Government always has eminent domain, and power of seizure for unpaid taxes. You are effectively renting the land from the government. Why not just call it that. Give people a 99 year lease instead of a mortgage and property tax. If you do nothing with the land, your lease can be terminated. If you improve the land (build a house on it), you can depreciate that on your taxes as a leasehold improvement.
The details need to be hashed out. I'm not convinced that 99 years is right, it's long enough to ignore and then pretend to be surprised when it comes up for renewal. Perhaps 35 years and no termination clauses, to make it easier to plan around? It would allow one house for having children and one house for retirement. The improvements mechanism would likewise need iteration.
I am interested to see how the various global experiments in these directions will pan out, though it looks like right now the market is betting that the 99 year leases will turn into perpetual ownership. That's unfortunate, because perpetual ownership is directly responsible for most of the largest perverse incentive problems in the real estate industry, not to mention ongoing gigantic deadweight loss.
I don't see how that's relevant, not all land is equally well suited for housing, especially among the elderly who are likely to need some sort of living assistance and regular access to healthcare.
property taxes are terrible for old people. you should be able to buy a reasonable amount of land tax free.
I think something like California's Prop 13 that puts a cap on property tax increases is a better idea -- but it should only apply to owner occupied primary residences, not second homes or investment properties.
> I think something like California's Prop 13 that puts a cap on property tax increases is a better idea
Prop 13 is one of the worst ideas in taxation ever. It would be better just to let the aged and disabled freely defer property taxes beyond a certain, income-based level (and maybe also to let other people do the same with certain limits on total deferred amount relative to assessed value for time-unlimited deferrals, and total time for value-unlimited deferrals.)
Roughly, yes (it's not exactly what I am describing, but pretty close); I’m saying if you are looking for a model to stop that problem elsewhere that has neither, copying Prop 13 (or even just the assessment increase limit, even if applied only to owner occupied primary residence) isn't the thing you should reach for.
Right. But the thing to realize about Prop 13 is that it was passed in malice. Angry voters wanted a "tax revolt" because they were upset with the state. That's why it expands to all property and not just primary residences (Jerry Brown's Prop 8 on the same ballot in 1978 was targeted but voters shot it down).
Of course nowadays it's easier to hire behind grandma than it is to defund school buses.
Land is not equally valuable so you can't look at the total land area of the USA and declare that everyone should be entitled to one tax free plot of land, land in the middle of Manhattan has a different value than land in the middle of a mountain range that's covered in 20 feet of snow half the year and is only accessible by helicopter.
Most old do not live in assisted care. And healthcare is independent of land ownership.
I didn't say "assisted care" my father lived almost his entire life on his own, but still had assistance from his children and occasionally a home healthcare worker - this is a lot harder to do if his allocated tax-free plot of land is 100 miles from family or healthcare services. Healthcare is independent of land ownership, but isn't independent of location - after one medication change, he had to go back to the doctor daily for monitoring for a couple weeks, then weekly after that for 6 months. How would he do that it it was a 4 hour round trip to the nearest healthcare facility?
Yes, people who have the property value go up around them should be kicked out of their homes. Goodbye old people and minorities who live in affordable neighborhoods that become gentrified. Kick them out on the street for failing to plan for possible future dynamics in their neighborhoods. It's the only fair thing to do.
Fairly sure this is to increase population density in the area, so selling old homes for tear downs would be a net gain.
The more reasonable approach to this would be discounts for the primary residence, and possibly discounts for populated units, depending on if you are targeting home owners / overall population and housing cost.
Quarter acre per family might make sense across the US as a whole with large swathes of empty land across the middle, but it makes no sense if you look at the average individual given the percentage of the country living in urban areas.
Boulder Colorado comes to mind with this idea. Live in the city for a certain amount of time and be over a certain age and your taxes are cut in half. Much better than paying the tax and the government giving it back.
Property Taxes aren't terrible for old people. How the mille-rate is set is terrible for old people.
A fixed mille-rate results in taxes going up as value goes up. This might be difficult to plan for and manage. However, many cities will simply put a lien on the property and collect when the property is sold/transferred/person dies.
However, this isn't necessarily how things need to be done. In New Zealand, the mille-rate is set to clear the budget. That way, the mille-rate changes with the city's budget, not valuations.
If the city wants to do more, they put it into the budget and say "do you want to pay for it?". Then the mille-rate is changed and everyone's taxes change.
If your house changes value, your taxes don't change! Unless your neighborhood changes its relative valuation, then it might go up or down.
Most states and counties I’ve lived in in the southeast US either exempt or minimize property taxes on residents that are over 65.
In fact, my current area (Cobb county, GA) nimbys keep trying to block assisted living residences. The argument is that old people move in, don’t pay into local funds, but the burden is hoisted on other younger families instead.
1/4 acre is the roughly the footprint of 432 Park Ave which is worth billions of dollars. There's no way a single old guy should be able to squat on that tax free.
The lack of property/land value taxes hurts anyone who isn't retired. I care much more about poor young people who get priced out of moving to a better job in the city than an old person who is "forced" to sell their multi-million dollar single family home. If an old person insists on living in a place where they can't afford property taxes, there are plenty of people willing to pay their property taxes until they pass in exchange for a stake in equity of their home.
> property taxes are terrible for old people. you should be able to buy a reasonable amount of land tax free.
When LVT is used to fund UBI, that ability is automatic: the "break even" point (where your taxes minus dividends are zero) would represent you owning a "reasonable amount of land" (as measured by value). If you own more than that, you pay for it; if you own less than that, you're paid for it.
In many states low income seniors can opt out of property taxes and take a lien on the house instead. This way they feel zero tax pressure no matter what happens to the local economy.
Examples are California Tax Postponement Program and New Jersey senior freeze.
USA has about 2.5 billion acres. 1/4 acre per person in an average area tax free is reasonable.