Why I'm against the pied-a-terre tax

Recently, certain far-left extremist politicians have suggested what Zohran HUSSEIN Mamdani has called a “pied-a-terre tax.” Other communist wackos around the country have taken up the cause. Speaking as a freedom-loving, god-fearing, red-blooded American man who doesn’t use pronouns, no likey.

Some of the details differ, but in general these proposals have these principles in common:

  • They apply only to secondary residences

  • They apply only to residences assessed above a certain threshold

  • The owner’s additional obligation is a surtax calculated by square footage

As a homeowner who doesn’t live in a municipality where such a tax is being considered, who owns only one home, and who is at no risk of having to pay this tax, of course I’m against it. They’re called principles, people.

We can’t keep punishing the rich as though the economic policies that favor them are disfavoring anyone else. Just because they’re bidding up prices on homes that sit empty for more than half the year, while year-round residents are increasingly priced out of markets that, in some cases, they’ve lived their whole life… where was I? I’ll come in again.

Fair is fair. The same rules ought to apply to everyone. I don’t have to pay a pied-a-terre tax, so why should Ken Griffin? Just because he has a pied-a-terre and I don’t? Don’t be ridiculous.

A million dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to. Someone who owns a multi-million-dollar property on the Cape, for example, isn’t necessarily rich. By the same token, someone who can’t afford a starter home there isn’t poor. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you. It’s just logical.

This is America. A land where everyone has an equal opportunity to inherit money and property. Should they be punished for owning a home free and clear that’s been in their family for generations, and by “punished” we mean paying a little bit more in taxes provided only that they don’t live in the house year-round? Does George Washington shit in the woods?

I know how to spend my money better than bureaucrats in Washington and on Beacon Hill, thank you very much. Unless they’re incinerating hundreds of billions of dollars on munitions at an exchange rate of about $3 billion per Iranian schoolgirl. That’s fine. I’m nothing if not consistent.