Could a vacancy tax solve Australia's housing crisis? Canada might have the answer
www.abc.net.au
In 2018, Canada's British Columbia introduced a tax against vacant homes. Three years later, more than 20,000 rentals were back on the market.

My first instinct is “yes” but then I thought about it and I think it’s just going to exacerbate the short-stay problem unless combined with other measures.

    • Nath@aussie.zone
      0·
      1 year ago

      A flat land tax is a bit rough. Take some 80-year-old pensioner living in a simple house in suburbs. They’ve lived there for 60 years, only that suburb is now gentrified and a blanket 1% tax on the house is now a $10k/year tax bill they need to come up with (Just making up example of 1% of $1 Million property) just to stay in their own home.

      This is a tough problem to figure out. I’m glad it isn’t my job. Whatever the solution is, I’m sure it’s more complicated that just blanket-taxing land. There’d need to be some exemptions to address this (which wouldn’t be that uncommon) and other scenarios I’m too dumb to think of. And whatever exemptions are applied, would naturally lead to people exploiting them as loopholes.

        • w2qw@aussie.zone
          0·
          1 year ago

          I mean like do you have an alternative to taxes? The whole point of this is you’d pay less after the switch.