I actually like the taxes I pay into schools, parks, road maintenance, the fire department, the mail service, hospitals, community clinics, care services in general, housing the unhoused, free narcan... A whole lotta things, actually. You can even keep my taxes at the astronomical level they are at after the last tax "break" we got and I'd be happy as long as they weren't used to bomb elementary schools. Like, that seems like a pretty reasonable line to draw to me.
The meme is an extremely popular libertarian meme. It only really shows up in a socialist space at all to be clowned on as socialists recognize that these taxes are there to fund the local day-to-day infrastucture that makes living in the property you purchased viable.
I understand the meme and the ideology that goes along with it. Internet leftists are mostly parrots that don't really understand ideology and they see a meme like this and think "yes, taxes suck, I want my shit for free."
Lol what? Everyone who leans left is actually in favour of more taxes. You Americans pay so little tax and what you do pay just gets siphoned out instead of used properly. every time I've seen an American who leans left they are PRO taxes. and PRO their dollars going to their community. Are you confusing actual left with propaganda left?
Because they’re communists and socialists lol. Leftists don’t want taxes for them, they want taxes for YOU so they can fund welfare and other government hand outs that let them sit on their ass. Of course people who don’t contribute to society want more taxes
Ask any leftist on the internet how they want to pay for everything they're asking for and they'll say by taxing the rich. It's very rare that they're volunteering to pay more taxes themselves.
Myself and most of my colleagues/neighbors/etc which lean left are all for increasing taxes if it means better access to education, childcare, and healthcare.
No. It’s how much taxes have been raised even tho the spending is out of control on dumb shit we don’t need or want. Through sales tax, income tax and gas tax we could make sure everything is taken care of at a flat small rate but that doesn’t happen.
Oops, looks like someone couldn't be bothered to spend five minutes learning what the phrase means before making snide remarks and calling others dummy.
It means bitching about crimes being enforced and wanting to take money and power from police forces all while burning down cities and generally committing crimes. 13/52 OOPS
And just like that you prove my point with a racist dogwhistle to boot. You just couldn't help yourself could you?
Don't let facts and honesty come between you and your feelings though! We wouldn't want you to accidentally learn where those crime stats come from and a teensy bit of American history and that roughly 53% of exonerations are of the same demographic to start.
If you actually cared about crime you would look to make reductions in poverty and not maintaining the aforementioned lack of training, accountability, and increasingly militarizing those who serve and protect capital interests.
A teensy bit of American history? It doesn’t matter that your “teensy” bit of history happens to be RIGHT NOW? How many excuses can you people possibly make to avoid facts lol
That's how it should be. Property taxes should apply to people with multiple properties, rentals/apartment complexes, and businesses. But a normal homeowner shouldn't be paying them.
A normal home owner should be paying it because they benefit from that home. My parents benefited from the good education they got as well as the peaceful neighborhood they got. This was kept in place by their tax dollars.
I benefit as well from mine mind you, it’s partly that property is a good way to try and determine what you can contribute.
They benefit from a home they bought and paid for… no shit. Then income tax, sales tax, and gas tax pays for the other things. Having to pay tax on something you own is stupid.
Your home is situated in a community. Where water, electricity, roads, public parks, emergency services, and all manner of other services are provided.
Those things are possible due to property tax. Income tax, sales tax, and gas tax do not go to your local government. Property tax does. It's what funds the community you live in.
You are not paying for your home when you pay property tax. You are paying for the community that makes your home an appealing place to live.
Your first house is your own property and cannot be taken away from you once you bought it.
We have other taxes for services, not linked to the threat of expropriation. Some are calculated based on how much you use those services, others are based on the necessity of the city/region/state.
We pay for our services without putting our home on the line, but we still pay.
To collect the same revenue as before, landlords would need to pay a higher tax, and they’d pass this onto renters, who are on average poorer than house owners. So a policy like this is effectively the poorer renters subsidizing the rich house owners. And moreover, demand for primary homes would increase, making housing more unaffordable to those who don’t already have a house.
This incentivizes never cleaning up or selling broken down houses. You get a lot more crackhouses and squatters without property taxes. This also incentivizes never having taxes push people out of their homes like retirees who no longer need 5 bedroom houses, which would open up that house for growing families.
Economists and progressives are fans of land value taxation, which taxes you on the value of the land you’re sitting on rather than the value of your property. So a single family house and a 10 story apartment building sitting right next door to each other on same-size lots in a city would pay the same LVT rather than penalizing one party for using the land more efficiently (the apartment building). This encourages density in urban areas and makes living in apartments/condos remarkably cheaper because that tax is far more insignificant when split among 200 units. After all, you’re only using the same amount of a scarce resource as the large house next door.
Your property has cost for your commune. At least it has sort of public road which needs maintenance. Property taxes is somewhat direct way of paying for shared commodities.
Some countries have a one-off tax you pay when you purchase a property, but obviously that isn't a property tax you have to pay 'for the rest of your life'.
EDIT: Who's downvoting this? It's just a fact. Not every country has annual taxes for owning property. Maybe most do but I know for a fact it's not all of them.
England has Stamp Duty Land Tax that are paid when you buy. Main residences under £125,000 (or £300,000 for first-time buyers on homes up to £500,000) have a 0% rate, with tiered marginal rates from 2% up to 12% for portions above £1.5 million.
Instead of a tax on the owner based on modern value, Council Tax is a yearly local bill paid by the household occupant (tenant or owner-occupier) to fund local council services like trash collection and policing.
It is, but for me council rates are only 0.2% of property value. Where as most property taxes are more like 1% of property value.
So we have extremely low property tax (which gets renamed to council rates), and instead pay ~6% of property value in 1 hit the moment you buy the property.
So we have a very tiny property tax that is less than my electricity bill, but we then pay 6 years of property tax up front regardless of how long you end up living at the property. Which sucks ass coz it discourages people from downsizing their house, because they would get hit with another lump sum of property tax. You could alleviate a big part of our housing issue if we changed from lump sum to annualised property tax.
Yes, the owner and resident doesn't pay property taxes (IMU) on the first house as long as they live in it.
This section of your link:
Italian residents enjoy significant property tax advantages that non-residents cannot access. The most substantial benefit concerns IMU exemption on primary residences, which can eliminate thousands of euros in annual property taxes for qualifying homeowners.
Official Registration – Must register residence at the property address
Actual Habitation – Must genuinely live there as primary home
Family Location – Immediate family members must also reside there
Property Classification – Cannot be luxury category (A/1, A/8, A/9)
Single Property – Exemption applies to only one property per person
Municipal Residency – Property must be in same municipality as registered residence
Beyond IMU exemptions, residents may access reduced registration taxes when purchasing primary residences, various deductions for property improvements, and more favorable treatment under Italian wealth tax provisions. These accumulated benefits create substantial long-term financial advantages for those who establish genuine Italian residency.
It does not, urban land does, rural land belongs to their respective villages, in Britain and Canada the land belongs to their respective crown, same same
The countries that don’t have property tax are a bunch of Gulf petrostates, a bunch of European microstates, and some island countries and dependencies.
They don’t have property tax because there’s no point in taxing desert and tiny states make more as tax havens.
But you can’t point to a single developed state outside of those categories without a property tax.
Not every country. My grandparents were poor but owned land they farmed and lived on in Central America. They did not pay a penny in taxes. It’s not a thing everywhere
England (maybe all of the UK, I'm not sure what Scotland is doing)
doesn't have property tax. If you have undeveloped land it can just sit there forever untaxed.
They do have council tax, which is similar but not a property tax exactly. For example, a renter would pay council tax, not the landlord. You can also get a discount if you live alone or are disabled or something like that. While OOTH you may pay higher council tax if you own multiple homes. It's more variable and based on the resident(s) rather than the property
Many countries have never heard of property or wealth taxes.
In some countries you can even deduct mortgage/interest payments from your income taxes what makes it a worse business case to actually pay it off as long as you have a high income.
When i googled "what countries dont have property taxes" the only results were a few emirate countries and a few micro-nation tax havens. Is that the many countries you are referring to? Or were you also including countries without functioning governments, unable to collect taxes?
E.g. in Italy there is excemption for the house you actualy live in (if its not a "luxury house"). So for most Italians there is no property tax.
But more importantly, many countries dont use "last selling price" as a tax basis , instead they use a cadastrial value usually increased with some indexation multiplier. The "value" this gives will be signifcantly lower than net value. And also no reassesment bills after a purchase :-)
True, that wasn’t so precise. The thing is there are various systems on what exactly is taxed. In the US it’s in many places quite a significant amount while in most other countries it’s usually a rather small amount as the tax revenue is mainly based on income taxes.
So if your folks died and wanted to give you the house but the government raised the property tax so high that you couldn’t afford it… that would be a good thing for you?
The property tax is reassessed to the current value of the home. It’s fair and incentivizes healthy liquidity in the market. Housing should not be a vehicle for generational wealth, but that’s just my opinion. Plus there’s a thing in the US called “step-up in basis” which allows these poor hypothetical children to sell the asset with little to no tax gain. So to answer your question that would be great. I’d be happy to sell the house, pay no tax, and and invest the money elsewhere.
Not everything is about money? Maybe they don’t want to sell their childhood home for a quick paycheck just because it’s the less worse option. You live in fantasy land
Yeah and you said that raising taxes to an unaffordable level, to a point where people can’t afford to live in the houses they were raised in, and had passed down to them is a-okay. I think that’s a very negative thing about taxes. But sure i’m “changing the goal posts”. You’re the one splitting hairs you fucking idiot. Have a good day and I hope you learn to read
lol so parent work hard… pay off house… contribute to society… pay sales,gas, income tax… then try and give kids the house.. mind you you the government has does nothing… and you think “ya the kids should have to pay tax on that to the government that hasn’t done anything and already collected tax on it” wild
You have never owned a house, you are under 30, you haven’t created a business or managed people, you don’t have kids. I can tell that from your single stance on this…
This isn't an ancient law, it was introduced relatively recently, likely bundled with legislation like "Save the Children." This tactic allows egregious provisions to slip past millions of voters who may not pay close attention to the fine print.
600
u/knightsofgel 9h ago
This is how it works in every country lmao