“Class Warfare”: Tax on Absentee NYC Property Owners Met With Strong Opposition
16th March 2019
Real estate brokers in New York are worried that foreign second home buyers are feeling “under assault” and may buy elsewhere as a result of “class warfare” in the form of a new planned tax, according to a new Bloomberg article. The proposed tax in New York is going to apply to properties of over $5 million that are owned by non-residents of the city.
And well they might. New York, like London and San Francisco, is increasingly becoming a ‘shell city’, comprising two classes of people: Those rich enough to afford to live there, and those too poor to go elsewhere. The basis of city finance, of course, is the rich, without whose taxes the city would be broke. This does not seem to impede the efforts of tax eaters to persuade the rich to go elsewhere, or to stay away, by means of oppressive taxes and regulations. How soon before New York winds up like Detroit? Not long, I’m thinking.