About wealth taxes, Washington State could learn from New York's 2nd home tax idea. It's hard to move homes out of state.

Homes are a form of wealth that can’t be easily moved out of the taxing district.

New York City’s Mayor Mamdani and Governor Hochul have secured New York state’s first tax on luxury second homes, calling it a major win for taxing the rich. The annual fee applies to homes worth more than $5 million for owners who mostly do not live in New York full time. It is aimed at ultrawealthy people who use New York real estate to store wealth without actually living here. They say around $500 million dollars per year could be raised. That's a lot of money. There's that much money just in second homes worth over $5 million? Wow.

I think it could work a lot better than taxing portable wealth, such as stocks, that folks could move out of state with them. Homes and land are attached to the earth.

I think it would work better than focusing most of taxing on business. That could diminish business in the state.

Detractors to the home tax fear that it could reduce the value of the homes. Maybe more of those second homes would go onto the market as some folks would still bail out of the state, but that seems like a lesser unintended side effect than crippling business or having a tax that wealthy people can easily avoid by just switching their legal residence to another state.

Reduced home value could lower projected revenue, but it seems like the lesser of the unintended consequences from a wealth tax.