OECD calls for higher property taxes to fight debt

Because of land and home speculation in many western countries, young people already can't or can barely afford to by a home and pay the mortgage payments.

Now they want higher property taxes?!

I don't know too much about how Europe calculates their different countries property tax but a quick look at most places a home/condo over $500,000 (if such a place exists) in most will cost the owner anywhere between $2,000 a year in certain zones all the way up to $20,000 in certain major cities (but I think discounts apply not sure.)

But I don know that in North America in any major city even my home city a $500,000 home/property the yearly property tax is anywhere from $ 5,000 to $10,000 a year.

In comparison a similar value home in Tokyo the yearly tax is around or under ¥100,000.

Now just in my home city, if you can find a $500,000 home, the yearly tax is around $6,000 so now add that to a monthly mortgage payment of around $1,500 and the family has to pay $2,000 a month plus all the rest of the cost associated with owning a home (school taxes and other taxes are not included in property tax in my home city so add those in)

But seeing a $500,000 house that is actually livable is really not possible, the average home is now $800,000 on the low end and more than likely over $1 million a young family would need a minimum of $4,000 every month to buy a home.

How much higher do these fools want to raise taxes?

Here is a better idea, fire at least half the government workers, pay them based on performance, no life time employment just like the rest of us, cut services and have the home owners responsible to clean the area in front of their home and businesses and not need street cleaning crews in every single place, reduce bureaucracy including firing these fools who are living off tax money.

Property taxes in the US range from 1% of assessed value to 2.5% of assessed value. County and local assessments can add small additional amounts.

have the home owners responsible to clean the area in front of their home and businesses and not need street cleaning crews in every single place, reduce bureaucracy including firing these fools who are living off tax money.

Many cities in the US make homeowners responsible for the maintenance of sidewalks and trees in front of their homes where cities once took care of these. What has resulted is badly broken sidewalks buckled by big tree roots, curbs buckled outwards, and nobody fixes anything. Cities are unable to force homeowners to make repairs because they refuse. Whole neighborhoods basically tell the city to stuff it, we're not fixing your $%&@# sidewalks. Cities send out letters threatening to bill homeowners for the repairs but it seldom comes to that because the sheer volume of repairs is beyond the ability of most cities to effect. Organized widespread noncompliance works it seems and residents have learned this.

This chart shows real property taxes by country for Europe. You can see they are a tiny fraction of the property taxes most US states charge. Give me a minute to find the same data for the US.

https://taxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Property_Taxes_2023.png

Here are property taxes by state in the US

https://www.tax-rates.org/taxtables/property-tax-by-state

Oh look! Texas is third highest while California is number 32.

Here are property taxes for Canada. You have to scroll down a bit to find the chart. Tax rates seem to vary by city rather than by Province and, surprise, Vancouver has the lowest property tax rate shown.

https://www.zolo.ca/blog/canada-property-taxes-by-province

The almost dead economies still make some small moves and so their idea is to act immediately and forcefully strangle again with even higher taxes? Unbelievable, what's going on in such their heads?

It would probably surprise many who have only lived in developed OECD nations that most of the world's governments struggle to collect taxes from their citizens. Economies with high proportions of off the books cash transactions, bartering, poorly defined property lines, lack of written deeds, sloppy local record keeping makes collecting taxes very hard to accomplish.

No mention about how certain members of the pro-globalization billionaires' club pay close to zero personal income taxes while owning over half the world's wealth, while corporations like Japan's Softbank are basically income-tax free as well?

Nope, let's instead sock it to lower class homeowners in western countries struggling with record levels of affordability. Keep it classy, OECD!

Desert Tortoise

Today 09:37 am JST

You correctly got Canada but not the USA, you show state property tax, you seem to have forgotten that cities in the USA also have property tax and like Canada vary widely.

In one city can be very different.

Ex:

The median property tax rate in Albany, NY is 2.53%, considerably higher than both the national median of 0.99% and the New York state median of 2.39%. With the median home value in Albany, the typical annual property tax bill reaches $4,965, exceeding the national median of $2,690.

But New York City the rate in 1.9% on average.

But from the NY gov site an example of the average tax calculation.

Market Value $450,000.00

Class 1 Assessment Ratio X .06

Assessed Value $27,000.00

Enhanced STAR Exemption Value - $3,460.00

Taxable Value $23,540.00

Sample Class 1 Tax Rate X .20385

Annual Tax in Dollars for above Example $4,798.63

And as far as I noticed, this does not include school taxes and several more.

Now as I pointed out this same market value home in Tokyo 23 wards would at most be ¥100,000. I know this because my place is well under ¥100,000 a year.

So the question is why in Albany are the property taxes more than 2.5 times than the much much bigger 23 ward metro Tokyo?

In Toronto the tax would be around $4000cnd but Windsor $9000 CND.

Seems something is off in many of these places and it starts with the cities, states and feds and the over paid over staffed government.

This will blow most Canadians minds, but including the national police department in Japan, the Japanese national government has far few employees than the Canadian federal government and the police force is not include in the feds employee numbers.

So a country of just under 40 million has more federal government employees than Japan with 126 million people, add in the provincial and city all unionized and cannot be fired to Canada's figures and Japan's figures and Canada still outnumberes Japan.

As of August 9th the lastest data in Canada is that 1 out of 4 employed Canadians works for government.

So raising taxes isn't going to solve any problems reducing government and waste is the only real solutions, but this group will never say this because THEY are government employees.