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Comment by peterbecich

5 days ago

I'm not a lawyer but I do not consider a property tax to be the same thing as a wealth tax.

If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city. The house structure is an improvement on leased land; this ties the property tax calculation to the value of the structure. The property tax is the rent on the land/space. I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes (no opposition from me).

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peterbecich

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thaumasiotes  5 days ago

> If I own a house or condominium in San Francisco, at a fundamental level I do not own the land or space the residence is sitting on. "Ownership" is basically a lease of the parcel from the city.

It's interesting to me that medieval European peasants "renting" the land they farmed had much stronger ownership rights than Americans who "own" land do today.

> I believe this is the constitutional justification for property taxes

It isn't. The constitutional justification for property taxes is that they're assessed by the states, not by the federal government.

The federal government is free to assess property taxes too, except that it must apportion them between the states: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C4-1/...

> An 1861 federal tax on real property illustrates how the rule of apportionment operates. Congress enacted a direct tax of $20 million. After apportioning the direct tax among the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, the State of New York was liable for the largest portion of the tax [...]

What this meant was that the federal government delegated tax quotas to the states and the states were responsible for collecting them as they saw fit.