Quote:
Originally Posted by daepp
Well this is frightening. I read the actual proposed text of the bill, and it literally kept me up last night. I don't know if it's the 25% tax, or the fact that it literally uses the word "priveledge" derogatorily throughout the text.
And as landlord's raise their rents to make up for the lost revenue, it will actually increase homelessness.
|
Read the bill carefully. The excise tax applies to "Qualified Taxpayers" which is defined as "“Qualified taxpayer” means a person or entity that
owns 10 or more qualified properties that are single family dwellings or 25 or more qualified properties that are either single family residential dwellings or multifamily dwellings in this state during the calendar year."
The target of the bill is large "institutional" type landlords - the ones who own whole fleets of rental houses/units. I think, for that target, the cutoff (10 units if they are all single family houses, or 25 units if they are a mix of houses and apartments) is too low - the big guys own hundreds and thousands of houses and apartments in a metro region, not 30 or 50. I also think the bill is ambiguously drafted because sec (2)(g)(1) doesn't make it clear if it is counting each apartment unit or each apartment building.
A 25% excise tax is punitive, of course. I think that is indeed the bill's intent: to cripple/force out the large institutional landlords (e.g. the private equity funds that are buying houses by the hundreds of thousands) and to favor small mom and pop type landlords. I'm not saying if that's good or bad, but that is probably the intent.
Anyway, if you own dozens of rental houses or a larger apartment building, this will be a problem. If it passes, which I doubt.