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Successful_Order_638 t1_ivb5b2d wrote

Reply to comment by CHECK_FLOKI in Re: Vermonters' reputed attitude toward out-of-staters by newsandseriousstuff

What should the legislature be doing differently?

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[deleted] t1_ivbaxlf wrote

[deleted]

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CHECK_FLOKI t1_ivdjcy9 wrote

Excellent write up. Please consider running for office. I'm sick of meme candidates and eagle face litterers everywhere.

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headgasketidiot t1_ivd8vti wrote

Why not just ban the thing you want to ban? What's the advantage of trying to get rid of a bad thing by increasing taxes vs just getting rid of the bad thing? AirBnB is bad. We all hate it. Let's just get rid of it so that people can live in those houses and be done with it.

It seems like as a society we've decided to replace a government that does things with a rube goldberg machine of tax incentives.

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popquizmf t1_ivej0nz wrote

Because then your treating every problem with a hammer? AirBnBs aren't the problem, it's most AirBnBs that are the problem. People who convert part of their home, or make a yurt on their land to rent, those people are not the problem, and your "just ban it!" Attitude isn't specific enough. That's why tax incentives work better when done well. Make owning a second he here very soon expensive tax wise, and use all that extra tax money to subsidize affordable housing and rentals. Your method does nothing. It opens the floodgate of real estate because now people have to sell their second homes. Inventories skyrocket, prices for everyone tank, and we haven't figured out how to help fund affordable rentals/homes.

If people want to buy second homes here, let them, but make them pay taxes through the nose to help everyone else. It's not like the average Vermonter can afford the 500k+ homes these people are buying.

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headgasketidiot t1_ivem83j wrote

> AirBnBs aren't the problem, it's most AirBnBs that are the problem. People who convert part of their home, or make a yurt on their land to rent, those people are not the problem, and your "just ban it!" Attitude isn't specific enough. That's why tax incentives work better when done well.

Your "when done well" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. My point is that your solution is just my solution + more steps + an exception for rich people.

If you want to tax things to disincentivize them, you have to make carve outs for the things you mention or you end up disincentivizing those too. If you have to go through the exercise of figuring out what's harmful and what's desirable anyway, then our solutions look the same except yours lets rich people pay their way out of it.

Why not just ban airbnbs in single family homes and allow yurts, spare bedrooms, etc.?

edit: fix autocarrot

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smokiechick t1_ivfhnpy wrote

I can't imagine the cost of enforcing those restrictions. No one in their right mind would self-report and we don't have the manpower to do inspections. If we have a registry, so that we know which properties are in this category, we can prosecute them for property tax evasion when income is disclosed.

I have an axe to grind against AirBnBers, so I'm more than happy to spend my free time figuring out how to make them suffer financially. Throwing them out doesn't prolong suffering nor does it earn revenue for the state.

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headgasketidiot t1_ivfk28d wrote

I could not disagree more. Tax enforcement is famously complicated, while by its very nature short-term rental has to be well advertised and publicly available to be viable as a business. AirBnB et al provide you with a list or properties along with a description. It'd be so much easier to enforce a ban on SFH housing on airbnb and other sites than for each town to audit the property taxes of every house to figure out if that person actually lives there and if so which tier of property taxes they belong to and such. We know rich people will just pay for accountants to try to skirt the rules, which will lead to very complex tax audits of rental empires. It's well documented that the IRS is underfunded and can't enforce the existing tax rules at the federal level.

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Successful_Order_638 t1_ivbm2w6 wrote

I think you’d have a commerce clause problem with some of that.

My own suggestions: end 5 acre zoning and eliminate Use Value Appraisal program (current use) eligibility for anybody who is not really a farmer or a forester.

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headgasketidiot t1_ivbeb0x wrote

Build public housing and ban airbnb.

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New-Double-3695 t1_ivdkrdb wrote

building more public housing doesn’t help a city. Building affordable units that add to the grand list.

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headgasketidiot t1_ivenoas wrote

American governmnet-owned housing does totally suck because it comes from a racist history of wanting to segregate poor, usually black city residents. It's a total self-own, because there are good examples of social housing being very desirable in cities. More than 40% of French renters live in publicly owned housing, and French cities and towns are top tier in the world in basically every way.

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