Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Isn't that already factored into the property valuation? A 60 year old 1,200 sq ft bungalow in Glamorgan or Braeside costs as much as a new 1,800 sq ft house in Bridlewod or Royal Oak. Or do you think lot size should be the only factor in residential tax rates?
There's also the political reality on the ground that's it's tough sell to dramatically increase the property taxes of a couple in their 70s who have lived in a modest house in Fairview for 40 years. They didn't have any say in the city sprawling out and making their modest home's displacement unfair.
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Using property value has a proxy does provide some semblance of a density based taxation but has some significant flaws with discourage redevelopment.
It doesn’t work because of you take 1 inner city 50 foot lot it pays X taxes. You build 2 inner city homes on the same lot and it now pays 3x taxes. That doesn’t really make sense.
The second problem is taxes are reduced on a property with time as things depreciate while taxes rise as land appreciates while cost to service remains constant.
In my world of civic taxation. You would have 3 components 1) an average based tax on square footage of the lot. This would be focused and paying for city costs which scale with city size. (Somewhere and I can’t find the article anymore I had read that roughly half of city costs scale with size whereas the other costs are fixed). Then you have a fixed rate property tax for the services which don’t scale with density. Then you apply a progressive scheme (preferably income or asset based rather than property value based) to have some of the taxes based on the ability to pay.
So yes you do have the political loser of an old lady living in her underdeveloped million dollar lot in her house she has lived in forever being unable to afford the property taxes on her home. That is okay and should be acceptable. They already have benefited significantly from that sprawl in terms of property appreciation.