Any tax deduction that can be realized by a non-person entity can be securitized.
"If you are a real estate professional, you can deduct any amount of rental losses, regardless of your income."
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) pass taxes onto owners.
Occasionally you pay no capital gains on selling property.
Occasionally you pay no tax on income used to pay off debt financed property.
If you are a huge investor you can buy and sell properties. Normally you would pay tax like anyone else at that scale, or you can sell shares in your REIT where a lot of the value is tied up in the fact that the small-time share buyers can realize tax benefits you can't. So you securitized tax benefits.
In some places, like California, the tax bill on your real estate is frozen some 30-40 fucking years ago as long as ownership doesn't change outside of family dynasties. So whereas you'd have to rent it in any other part of the civilized world, here you can just wait until grandma dies and inherit the house. It sits vacant.
Some people create family dynasties by marriage. Although it's a stretch to call that, strictly speaking, a tax dodge.
We don't tax vacant properties, which could encourage their use productively.
Anyway let me put this another way. Would it shock you that I know a lot of people here in San Francisco with 2 or 3 houses owner-occupied by a total of 5 people because (1) they have just lived here forever, (2) their kids have moved out, and (3) the taxes are frozen in the early 90s? And you wonder why there's vacancy. 3 houses for 5 people!
Thanks for this, I hadn't thought about securitizing tax benefits.
But in the SF case if you have 5 people living in 3 houses, say, as 2 / 2 / 1, and this are single-family houses, I don't think you have vacancies. "Occupants per square foot" isn't a measure of vacancy except when it's zero.
Any tax deduction that can be realized by a non-person entity can be securitized.
"If you are a real estate professional, you can deduct any amount of rental losses, regardless of your income."
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REIT) pass taxes onto owners.
Occasionally you pay no capital gains on selling property.
Occasionally you pay no tax on income used to pay off debt financed property.
If you are a huge investor you can buy and sell properties. Normally you would pay tax like anyone else at that scale, or you can sell shares in your REIT where a lot of the value is tied up in the fact that the small-time share buyers can realize tax benefits you can't. So you securitized tax benefits.
In some places, like California, the tax bill on your real estate is frozen some 30-40 fucking years ago as long as ownership doesn't change outside of family dynasties. So whereas you'd have to rent it in any other part of the civilized world, here you can just wait until grandma dies and inherit the house. It sits vacant.
Some people create family dynasties by marriage. Although it's a stretch to call that, strictly speaking, a tax dodge.
We don't tax vacant properties, which could encourage their use productively.
Anyway let me put this another way. Would it shock you that I know a lot of people here in San Francisco with 2 or 3 houses owner-occupied by a total of 5 people because (1) they have just lived here forever, (2) their kids have moved out, and (3) the taxes are frozen in the early 90s? And you wonder why there's vacancy. 3 houses for 5 people!