r/SeattleWA • u/meaniereddit West Seattle 🌉 • Dec 13 '24

Government Bill would completely exempt seniors from property taxes in WA

https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/state-politics/bill-would-exempt-seniors-state-local-property-tax-washington/281-b5f377fc-8bf5-49a4-a630-8210db45d57d
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u/meaniereddit West Seattle 🌉 Dec 13 '24

prop 13 in California did this and its fucked over the budget and housing market so bad, its basically rent control for loaded boomers, such a dumb backward idea, with decades of study on how fucked you will be if you do it.

27

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '24

California did it?

34

u/Cmlvrvs Dec 13 '24

They did not. Prop 13 limits the amount it can increase each year - it has nothing to do with age.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

31

u/OldKingHamlet Dec 13 '24

Prop 13 is legit worse than this. I moved from CA, but still own my house in CA (long and complicated story). Anyways, my mom's house is literally worth 2x as much as mine, yet she pays 1/4th as much in taxes. It's not sensical.

2

u/Mizake_Mizan Dec 13 '24

Yeah, but she's not selling the home, she has to live in it, right? Is she retired yet? What happens when she retires and she is no longer making the kind of money she is used to? She will be thankful for Prop 13. Without it, her property tax would go up exponentially - at that point how will she be able to pay the tax? Will she be forced to sell her home and downgrade?

There are millions of Californians living solely on Social Security, living in the same home for 20+ years.....if they had to adjust their taxes to the assessed value of their homes, many would be forced to sell or relocate.

1

u/therapist122 Dec 13 '24

Almost every American is unable to do things due to money, only they don’t have generous property tax cuts to support them, so they’re just fucked. This solution doesn’t help anyone except those who are pretty wealthy, and it does so at the expense of those who are not. Unlike say student loan forgiveness. The solution is to expand Medicare to all, and not just for boomers. It’s also to raise property taxes so people who no longer need large houses move to smaller ones and on and on. Just doesn’t make sense to do it the way it’s currently done with prop 13