My opponent would like you to think he is defending the average household, but he’s actually criticizing bills that tax millionnaires and/or real estate investors.
Here are the bills that he criticized and what they actually do: (I’m copy-pasting the Legislative Summary of each bill, word-for-word, from rilegislature.gov, with My Note for more context).
My Note: If a municipality chooses to use it, this would be a one-time impact fee on new commercial developments, similar to other impact fees for water or sewage. The bill does not mandate 10% or any specific amount; that would be up to the town and it should be reasonably tied to the demand for affordable housing (often for new workers) that would be created by a new commercial development.
My Note: The non-owner-occupied tax is meant to disincentivize real estate investors or people who are only using it as a 2nd or 3rd home; this has been proposed for years and is also known as the “Taylor Swift” tax.
My note: Massachusetts passed a similar millionnaires tax a year ago and brought in a lot of funding for education and higher education. Many other states have similar tax structures.
My Note: A tax on short-term capital gains is meant to discourage real estate “flippers” – investors who buy a property (often in cash to out-compete regular homebuyers) then renovate and sell for a profit.
My Note: A one-time “mansion tax”, if a town chooses to opt in, this would only apply to the amount that is over $800,000 in a home sale. It would fund affordable housing within the town it is collected in.