wages in australia are simply too high!, page-65

All4one

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"How is placing more tax on land going to make it cheaper to own? Land rates are already way too high."

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If you think it through fully it's not quite like that.The higher the holding costs, the lower the price. Same as if stamp duty were say, tripled or quadrupled, who would pay, the buyer or the seller? The seller would, because though the buyer would write the stamp duty cheque, it would reduce the value of the house by a similar amount.

My point is just that once purchased, real estate has minimal holding costs regardless of council rates. What are they, measured against capital gains of 5 or 10x that? Money for jam....

How much would land be worth if there were a serious land tax?Not as much as now...

I am not arguing for more taxation, far from it. It would be better policy to tax land that can't be hidden no matter how smart the accountants are as someone is going to pay it or lose it, than to have a myriad of tax laws trying to tax moving targets like income. All that does is keep the accountancy profession in business and it doesn't produce a thing except higher prices, more regulation,more bureaucracy,less production and lower standard of living for everyone.

The main problem is that we think we can all get rich(as a country) selling each other overpriced real estate...

Just my thoughts on the matter.


cheers