Hang on - there is a - for want of a better term - Capital Gains Tax on property price rises? Wow. Is it working?
The UK had a simialr tax in the late 40s - it enabled the building of the "new" towns like Milton Keynes and Harlow (where I was born). Simply put, if everyone knew the government was going to build a ton of new roads and schools on that field, then you would be crazy to sell the field for anything less then a fortune. But if everyone knew the government was going to simply tax the fortune straight back at 100% then you sold the field for a fair value, and the government spent the money not on buying the field but on roads etc. Since that was repealed in 50s no similar large scale house building has been affordable.
The UK still has capital gains tax on sales realising property appreciation. The main exception is on a vendor's principal residence, so most home owners never pay it.
The impact of such a tax would be to hold back the huge climb in residential / urban property prices and so funnel it into something more socially useful
Having the tax miss 99% of the sales that drive that growth kind of misses the point :-(
A British PM imposing capital gains tax on residential property sales would be as popular as a US President setting gasoline taxes at European levels. The economic logic may be sound, but politics is the art of the possible...
There is not capital gains tax on housing (in denmark), even if some politicians would like that. In Sweden its reverse, low property taxes but profit on selling is the house is taxed as income. In Denmark the profit is tax free.
You are paying property taxes for houses every year, these taxes are in theory based on the value of the house even if they have been lagging the real value of the house.
I think the post refers to the point that you don't pay property taxes.
This is the concept of a Land Value Tax (LVT), except that unlike a property tax, LVT wouldn't tax your own improvements to property (like building a house), only 100% of fortune gained from land appreciation.
The UK had a simialr tax in the late 40s - it enabled the building of the "new" towns like Milton Keynes and Harlow (where I was born). Simply put, if everyone knew the government was going to build a ton of new roads and schools on that field, then you would be crazy to sell the field for anything less then a fortune. But if everyone knew the government was going to simply tax the fortune straight back at 100% then you sold the field for a fair value, and the government spent the money not on buying the field but on roads etc. Since that was repealed in 50s no similar large scale house building has been affordable.