Oddbean

i know the popular (and imo correct) view is that charging tax on unrealized gains (e.g. in the stock market) is awful, perhaps immoral. But just a second - how is this any different from charging an annual (not one-off) tax on property/real estate that you own? "Unrealized" just means you continue to hold the asset. Seems like it's exactly the same thing. (And btw I don't live in a country where there's a continual annual property tax myself, but it is indeed a common thing in many countries afaik).

taxation of commercial valuations is very legal and proper. that's what lawyers are for... to haggle back and forth with the gooberment people about whether the amount of tax is extortion or fair provision for the "needs" of that local "society" and all the gobblety gook they decided to buy last year on credit! LOL... i used to be all worried about how "complex" everything was... Steve Emerson helped me get my mind right on this government and tax money non-sense... it's so simple!

https://i.nostr.build/uTJxFXW3ToS47GLe.jpg nostr:nevent1qqs9fyd2cpreky452jypnezaqsxz7khzp3znfyuzngxcz7u4m3a5x2gpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchsygr8twz0ua0zz64eglr58rh9r898wafhdh0stkklhf3830gp9cwh9qpsgqqqqqqskq6vw0

There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.' Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects. Murray N. Rothbard

Correct. Property tax is wrong and needs to go away. You can never truly own property if the gov can seize it for nonpayment of tax. It’s insane. Another appealing aspect of #Bitcoin .. as long as I hold the keys, no one is taking it. No one is charging a fee from me. True sovereign ownership.

property tax goes to the maintenance of the city services you use. (where does your poop go?, how do you get water?,where does the storm water run off from your property get dealt with...). unrealized gains does what?

Must be different in different places. Here in ES for example, there's 'alcaldia', and where I'm from in the UK there's 'council tax', which are fees you have to pay for local services like that. But afaiu that's not the same as property tax. Perhaps I'm wrong; in the US for example, is property tax like that? Or is there a separate charge for local services?

No idea about the US but in one of your colonies North of the US. our property tax gets split and half goes to the province and half goes to the municipality. The municipality then has to deal with the services. I made a bad assumption thinking the west was similar.

Yep, this is exactly how Steve Emerson approaches it... He loves to say, "There is no legal process for them to kick you out of your only home and sell off the entire $200,000+ property for a few thousand in back taxes that they can never lawfully prove you owe, based on a fraudulently assigned "fair market value" for your home that you haven't even listed for sale on ANY market, etc., etc., etc... It's FRAUD, through and through, and the people keep letting it happen and NOT holding their elected representatives and officials accountable for their crimes.

in the states, we supposedly have limits on what government can tax... basically commerce. there's enough taxable commerce to provide for every single dime of legislation without trampling on rights. this is the basis of the homestead exemption for households that decided to own a homestead by right and practice commerce on the same property. the government CANNOT tax both. ONLY the business portion, thus the exemption for the homestead and the business portion split out for separate valuation, assessment and return filings so as not to infringe on the substantive right of providing shelter and other creature comforts for the dependents and family... of course government will murder millions if the vote is 51% majority, heck! sometimes they only need 50% +1 to justify their democratist horrors and monstrosities... so engaging in budget scope creep by means of "legal abuse", "abuse of process" and "color of law actions" in order to "collect a little extra" since it's all for "a good cause" has become the normalcy over decades of no one caring to engage politically at the local level and spazzing out every 4 years at the national political level.

In both cases, you are paying for organised violence to enforce your socially-constructed monopoly rights to something. In the case of real estate, your neighbours would probably do that for free, and for most of humanity's existence they did. In the case of publicly-traded shares in the fruits of other people's expected future labour, enforcable only via a byzantine web of regulations and the unsleeping micromanagement by State bureaucracies... that is arguably far more worthy of taxing. Its just that taxing unrealised gains is the same as taxing "the Emperor's new clothes". Price discovery by trading is asking that small child's opinion. Its bad for "the System" and the parasites proposing it are fools, but I'm happy to watch them foot-gun.

yes, property taxes are bad for the same reason however, coercive governments maintain control over a territory and tying their "revenue" to the value of that territory at least provides decent incentives