Comment by bflesch

6 months ago

A "vacant storefront tax" would easily be circumvented by a legal entity with a vending machine business or the "owner" themselves putting one of their "offices" there (a table).

5 comments

bflesch

Reply
ryandrake  6 months ago

Any realistic vacant land tax with teeth would obviously need to define vacancy such that silly tricks like this wouldn't work.

  • AnimalMuppet  6 months ago

    And in response, owners would do something slightly less silly - just enough to technically fall within the rules, and so not be subject to the tax.

    • ryandrake  6 months ago

      Then fix those technicalities, too. People act as though laws are etched permanently into clay tablets. Lawmakers should keep iterating until the bugs are worked out and the letter of the law more closely approaches the spirit of the law.

      We shouldn't just always default to doing nothing because someone, somewhere is going to try to rules-lawyer their way out of it.

      1 reply →