why you should rent and not own property !

Monday, January 04, 2016 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

TAGS:

From the FT

The rulers of ancient Rome regarded income tax as a measure to be avoided. A levy on wages would not have raised much, anyway; the hardest working people were slaves, who made up 15 to 25 per cent of the population and had no earnings at all. Instead, the Romans taxed property. Citizens paid a levy on everything they owned — their land and the domus that stood on it, livestock, gold coins, slaves. Read “robots” for the last, and it is an approach today’s advanced economies should copy.


http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1d1d48f0-aef1-11e5-b955-1a1d298b6250.html#axzz3wHDsk96w


The idea to tax something that you want doesn't make sense. Governments "should" want people to work and to make a living on their own so they should promote working and not tax it.

since most of the tax receipts came from income tax what should Governments do?

tax everything you own a bit. Real estate, car's paintings etc....If you have a lot of assets not producing you would have a problem. This is a elegant solution with the benefit that property doesn't move. 

I don't see a bright future for the real estate investor.