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Nancy Pelosi |
Subject: How to Solve the Housing Crisis - Government Style
Well, take a look at this article in the Spokesman Review titled,
Health law's heavy impact"
for a review of some of the taxes you will soon be experiencing as a
result of that legislation. Of particular note is the new 3.8% tax
on real estate transactions. This means that if you buy/sell a
$300,000 home, you will pay a tax of $11,400, and if the home goes
for $750,000, the tax will be $28,500. And remember, this is on
top of all the current real estate taxes that are already being
imposed. If you are young and mobile in your career, this is a tax
that will hit you every time you relocate.
Or maybe you are older and were thinking of retiring to a new
location. Open up your wallet, because all real estate throughout
the country will immediately increase in cost by about 4%. Or
possibly you are in business and are thinking about expanding your
growing practice by moving into a new facility that will cost
$30 million. You new tax would then be a whopping $1,140,000.
Yes, that ought to make you think twice about that move.
Given our current housing crisis, with an oversupply of homes that
is killing the entire construction industry, can you think of a
worse idea for addressing these problems than to increase the cost
of all homes by a huge amount, pricing more people out of the housing
market and further reducing demand. As Cloud Downey also noted, the
immediate impact will be to further flood the market with home sales,
as owners attempt to sell before the tax kicks in. And reviewing the
overall state of the economy, with so many businesses struggling to
stay afloat, consider how damaging a new tax of this magnitude will
be, making capital investment that much more difficult and retarding
any latent recovery.
Is there still a person out there who can state with a straight face,
that when it comes to managing the economy and the lives of each
of us, that the government is qualified to make intelligent choices
that are in the best interest of the citizens? If there is such a
person, then my response is the same one Joe Wilson gave to Obama:
"You lie!"
[Thanks to Cloud Downey for bringing this article to my attention.] |
