Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
Now they are being told that they don’t deserve to be able to do that because the government fucked over the younger generations.
|
I think this is an odd way to frame the notion of simply paying the same tax rates as somebody else. Ironically the poorest seniors tend to be excluded from this as rental buildings of 4 units or more are not covered and in the NS market right now those tax bills are likely passed on to tenants.
A longer write up:
https://www.turnerdrake.com/who-wears-the-cap-now/
Quote:
The unvarnished truth is that the CAP exists, and persists, for political reasons that do not get said out loud. It is popular because the impression of tax savings is visible and intuitive for a large voting bloc, and the resultant costs are scattered out of sight. While we do not want to understate the validity of challenges it was meant to address, only a minority of owners are ever truly at risk of displacement or material hardship without the CAP in its current form.
For most, the appeal is simpler: people like paying less property tax, and they like having a sense of stability about what they will owe next year. All else equal, acting on those instincts does not make anyone greedy or immoral; it makes them normal. But all else is not equal. One person’s relief is another’s burden, and the truly vulnerable homeowners that the CAP was originally designed to protect have become a convenient human shield for the much larger group whose primary motivation is simply their desire to not lose a nice‑to‑have benefit.
If the CAP disappeared overnight, owner‑occupied properties in HRM would, on average, pay about $550 more per year in tax. That is not nothing, but it is less than the additional tax that is already being heaped onto apartment units which house the vast majority of lower‑ and fixed‑income households. The status quo is more Sheriff of Nottingham than Robin Hood.
For many long‑tenured owners, the reality is even less defensible. The CAP does not stop at keeping the bill to a reasonable level of growth, but has quietly pushed them into paying even less tax over time.
|
I don't think it makes sense to conflate HRM spending arguments with this as they affect everybody and the burden of the excess spending, if it's a real thing, disproportionately falls on the less-recently-capped or non-qualifying residents. Instead when focused on the cap we should imagine that any municipality in NS collects $X, they set the mill rate such that they collect $X, and then the taxable assessment cap results in some people paying less than their share and others paying more to make up the shortfall. The people over or under paying will be a mix of of well-off and struggling folks, as there's no means testing.
Threaded Mode