Comment by solatic
2 days ago
For what it's worth, the way Israel deals with this is that property tax is levied on the property resident, not the property owner. In other words, when you rent a house, the person who is legally responsible for paying the tax is the renter.
This makes it exceedingly easy to ensure that old people are not affected by property taxes: if you are elderly resident, you simply get a discount. If you are an elderly landlord who owns multiple properties, your younger tenants don't get a property tax discount, and you pay income taxes (not discounted for age) on the rental income. If you are elderly and want to downsize, your property tax discount follows you into the smaller apartment.
The system has its challenges, but it is far superior to Prop 13 and achieves the same goal.
> if you are elderly resident, you simply get a discount.
New York does it this way as well. If you are over the age of 65, you get a different rate.