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Landlords should have to pay income tax on their rental properties regardless of whether they're rented out or not. (gothamist.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

386 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.crimedad.work/post/12162

Why? Because apparently they need some more incentive to keep units occupied. Also, even though a property might be vacant, there's still imputed rental income there. Its owner is just receiving it in the form of enjoying the unit for himself instead of receiving an actual rent check from a tenant. That imputed rent ought to be taxed like any other income.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Landlords pay up front (directly or via a loan

You're describing a developer. Most landlords aren't developers.

And yes, the government should take on the role of developing residential properties and ensuring everyone has access to them. Housing is not a commodity, it's a basic human need.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

not to mention, many big developers aren't paying cash to construct housing. they get a loan or establish a line of credit with or brokered via investors/banks/funds. the first rule of doing anything under capitalism is to use somebody else's money to do it, and all those loans drawing on lines of credit ultimately leads back to the central bank anyway.

it's a massive shell game to obscure the fact that workers do all the work to create the products and services and then have to pay their shitty wages right back to access the very things they create, just so maybe 2-3 million megarich assholes can roll around in piles of money and make an income for doing literally nothing.

landlords are among the most nakedly parasitic sectors of society, and even then we still get bootlicking bozos pretending they "provide" housing or are somehow responsible for the community infrastructure that makes living in the place where the house exists desirable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Food is also a basic human need, and markets seem to work well-enough for that. The core difference is that, while we have an extreme abundance of food to the point of waste, cities have been underbuilding housing for decades and there are far more people wanting to move to them than available housing units, so only the richest people get the housing. This puts a lot of positive pressure on housing prices

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Food is also a basic human need, and markets seem to work well-enough for that

That's because it is easy to compete to sell food. Housing doesn't work that way.

cities have been underbuilding housing for decades

It's not just cities, but I otherwise agree.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s because it is easy to compete to sell food. Housing doesn’t work that way.

Agreed, but there's a lot that could be done to make it much much easier. For nearly a century, housing policy has been explicitly designed to make housing a productive asset for investment, which is a goal that's fundamentally opposed to housing being affordable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Agreed. Housing is a right, a basic necessity, not an investment vehicle.