Boston is certainly not the first city to hit the wall of declining commercial property values, and it won’t be the last. The cheering was widespread when everyone worked from home during the pandemic, but now that many of those jobs have disappeared and downtowns are filling up with the homeless, there’s simply not enough commercial tenants left to fill the gap.
A recent report by the Boston Policy Institute found the city may lose $1.4 billion in tax revenue over the next five years due to empty office spaces. Boston could also face a recurring shortfall of about $500 million each year after that first half-decade, the report found.
In a sane world, the solution would be to cut spending and align it with revenue. But in the insane Keynesian universe, the “solution” is to tax the remaining commercial property owners even harder than they already are. I can’t imagine any negative consequences arising from that, can you?
The measure would give the city the flexibility to temporarily shift more of the property tax levy onto commercial and industrial property owners. If approved, new tax rates would only go into effect if commercial valuations come in low as expected, Wu said.
Tax me harder, daddy…
I’m all for Boston raising taxes.
Convert all that vacant office space to group immigrant housing. Big orphanages for the “newcomers”. I hear there are 10 million unhoused “immigrants” who would LOVE to live in upscale leftist Boston. Then simply TAX those “newcomers” out every orifice they have. I’ve always been told that immigrants pay their “fair share” of taxes … so let ‘em have it!
The government created a huge problem when they shut down the world economy because of a bad flu (and prob to get rid of Trump).
They didnt listen to the freedom convoy, nor all the other worldwide protests.
Ask me if I care about the City’s revenue problems. They can learn to code.
“A recent report by the Boston Policy Institute found the city may lose $1.4 billion in tax revenue over the next five years due to empty office spaces. Boston could also face a recurring shortfall of about $500 million each year after that first half-decade, the report found.”
Want real estate tax revenue?
I have an idea. Harvard takes up 600 acres. Harvard College – 208 acres; Harvard Business School – 40 acres; Harvard Medical – 21 acres and on and on. It is tax exempt as is MIT, Boston University, Northeastern University and many others. Tax the $hit out of them. They are rich and not moving. They are very rich Communist Enterprises. Then again Boston and Massachusetts are Communist so who the hell cares.
I went to Harvard and now detest the place. Pay up!!!
I just filled out and mailed my Harvard Overseers (The people who help run, sorry “ruin” the place):
My ballot: I wrote “None of the Above” and “No Communists, No Progressives, No Fascists and No Crummy Democrats:”
Probably the last ballot they will send me. Screw them.
How’d they ever admit YOU!? … probably the same way UC Berkeley admitted me … although the bar for my public Univ. was jussssst a bit lower. Hahaha ha ha ha
Who cares? Boston is simply at the head of the line of cities undergoing collapse in the US. It’s on the same path as Detroit started down in the 1960s, and that San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles are on. Businesses and taxpayers simply move elsewhere leaving the city to disintegrate behind them. The world is filled with cities once among the greatest ever and now nothing more than ruins. At one time, the largest city in the world was Memphis in Egypt, but for the last 1500 years it’s been nothing more than a few scattered ruins.
Perfectly foreseeable, as the commercial real estate market in Boston took a dip starting in 2022, and there are a lot of properties who probably can’t refinance at current rates, and will be “returned” to the lenders, when the loan is up, with lenders looking to get them sold quick because they don’t want to pay $24.07 per $1000 of “value”.
and it’s the defective half Keynes theory, spend more in good times and bad, and never pay your debts.
Covid policies and mandates were the intentional destruction of countries and peoples.
Sigh. “The measure would give the city the flexibility to temporarily shift more of the property tax levy onto commercial and industrial property owners…” Businesses do not pay taxes, they collect taxes. Where does a business get the money to pay taxes? From its customers. Suckers. You got fooled again.
Hey, lets just get together for a big tea party!
If they raise taxes on the remaining corps, many may just move to lower tax rate areas of the country, so they will be in a worst situation then they are now.
It is an idea as brilliant as building ice igloo villages in the Sahara desert with the same outcome.
Massachusetts; the state that sends (again and again) Pocahontas and Bernie Sanders to represent them in Congress. Draw your own conclusions.
Warren Sanders?
And Trump’s the griftet?
Sanders is from Vermont….but I get the sentiment.
Wu stated she’d had to deal with problems that were “expensive and white” during her first year. I suspect the source of her problems are getting the hell out of there.
…Or, first, the city could lay-off a whole bunch of civil servants (the highest-paid ones like the department heads and political appointees should be overwhelmingly represented) and rebalance city hall and its municipal services to reflect the actual needs of the city. Then drastically cut taxation to all, commercial and homeowners to encourage businesses to move in and for homeowners not to leave the city. Then really clamp down on the crime–HARD.