Taxing Homes

This is just silly. Large houses are more expensive anyway and energy inefficient houses have more expensive upkeep. The market is more then able to efficiently allocate resources , we sue don't need some academic to tell us what to do.


PEOPLE who want to build energy-guzzling McMansion-style homes should pay more taxes, an academic says.

And taxes should also be used to make owning multiple plasma TVs prohibitive, says Melbourne University construction expert Dr Robert Crawford.

Rapidly increasing suburban house sizes, more reliance on cars and a rise in demand for consumer goods had wiped out many of the benefits of building energy-efficient homes, he said yesterday.

"The most dominant characteristic of the new houses in these estates is their size ... new residences are well over 200sq m, more than double the average of the 1950s," he said.

Releasing a faculty of architecture, building and planning study on the impact of housing on greenhouse emissions, Dr Crawford said one option was to penalise those who built big houses.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/money/tax-time/higher-tax-call-for-mcmansion-dwellers/story-fn8qmzek-1226068683960#ixzz1OJ7a15Vx