An Open Letter

I’m going on another walk outside of work A journal, because I honestly really liked it last time and I feel like I could use a little bit of a mental reset. I was in a slack thread for one of the social channels and they were talking about property tax. One person was arguing how they want financial freedom and to them if they buy their house outright, they should not pay any taxes on it. Another person was saying that property taxes are a privilege, of you owning a home and if you want to make the choice of buying a home instead of renting, you should be willing to pay that property tax.

I disagreed with both sides, and I think that a happy ground is in the middle as everything always is, but I’ll get to that after I talk about each side first. I think that taxes are moral and ethical. There is the obvious part where everyone uses infrastructure and government services and that needs money to run, but additionally I think we should be paying for services that we do not use if you are in a position to do so. I think things like disability or unemployment benefits are so incredibly important for so many people that are struggling or haven’t had a lot of the opportunities or privileges that I’ve been given in life. And I think it is my obligation to try to care and help those people through the services with my tax money. This part I’m a little bit ignorant about, but I know that Medicare is a huge huge strain on the tax system, but at the same time I think that if this money is going towards older people who are not as able to work, and it is going towards their health specifically, then yeah, that is a just cause. I also think that as someone who is arguably wealthy and a high learner, I should be paying more in taxes to be able to support the people who are not as fortunate. Of course, there are the issues of taxes, not being used properly or going to the wrong places, and I think that is a completely different issue, but still should not discount from either the thought taxes in theory or whatever portion of the taxes that do end up going towards the appropriate places.

But at the same time, I disagree with property tax being the way it is because I think it is prohibitive for a lot of the new generation. Ignoring all of the other issues with housing for a second, even if you are able to finally buy a house, in property tax, you will end up paying essentially a third of what you would be paying in rent at least, but this comes with additionally things such as repairs, maintenance, and all these other costs that come with having a house instead of renting. And this is still under the assumption that you have already somehow fully paid the thing off. I think that paying a third of what you would be from renting in perpetuity, even if you fully own, the property is kind of egregious. I think housing should be seen as a basic human necessity, and the fact that there is no real way to have a house without having to constantly have enough of a stream of income to be able to sustain that, comparable to renting something smaller for the rest of your life is grim. I already think that it is such an incredibly difficult thing to be able to buy a house, and then additionally pay it off. But even if you can work incredibly hard get lucky have all the other stars align that you can do that, I think it is messed up that you are still permanently financially on the hook.

I think for me, the middle ground should be property taxes, being much lower on primary estate, it’s fine to have higher taxes on additional properties because in that case, someone already does have a place to stay no matter what. I think instead things like inheritance or high earners should be taxed more, and I say this, as someone who is likely to already be part of both of those categories. But I say this because both of those situations are not so directly linked to a fundamental right like housing. Essentially it just boils down to taxing things that hurt people the least, because I think it’s no question that past a certain level of income, you are not needing that to survive a sufficiently happy and healthy life, it is more just wanting to accumulate wealth. And that is so much less important than someone having access to something so fundamental.