In: Accounting
Answer:
Income taxes are taxes that are levied as a percentage of income, have the virtue that people will actually have the money to pay them. Current USA income tax brackets are progressive and effective tax rate for highest slab rate is 40%.
National property tax would increase taxes on the poor less and increase taxes on the rich more while decreasing taxes on the middle class who bear most of the tax burden in income tax system. But this theory will hold true when there is high positive connection between income of people and its property investments.
Otherwise there will be unbalanced tax burden on taxpayers. Person with very high income with low property investments will pay marginal higher tax compared to middle class income people.
It is also more difficult to cook the books on real estate compared to income or sales taxes. All the information is public and the property cannot be hidden or moved offshore. But there may arise issue related to valuation of property.
Another issue with property taxes is that owner might own
property which is appraised at a high value but not necessarily
derive any income from that property. Property taxes can thus
really energy suburban sprawl. Property tax will skew an economy in
favor of economic activity that does not use a lot of land or more
use of lower value land. So Property taxes are good when government
wants to develop semi urban or village areas.
But it is also unfair to farmers and lower income class living in villages for forcing to pay more tax due to some transportation developments happened in nearby surrounding areas of village. But Farm land, seniors, and homeowners may be allowed to get exemption to reduce their tax burden due to owning non-income producing property.
Replacing the income tax with a property tax would change people's behavior. With an income tax, your tax increases as you earn more, but earning more still gets you more, so it's worth it. With a property tax, a specific behavior that is investment driven is discouraged. There is no guarantee that people could afford a high property tax on their home and taking trillions in tax revenue solely from real estate may hugely disfigure the market which will have wide-ranging consequences.
There are other issues related to tax liability in case of rental properties in places like New York & other urban areas where lot of people don't own property.