TRUTH In Politics & Media

????????????????????????TRUTH In Politics & Media

????????????????????????????By Tony Maniscalchi 11/2022

?Yeah I know, it’s a lie and it’s deceptive too, but while the media has focused their reporting on the mid-term elections in the House, Senate & high profile Governor and Mayoral races, they have intentionally avoided coverage on Propositions and Measures impacting many property owners. One in particular is measure ULA in the city of Los Angeles & marketed, yes marketed and advertised as?“the mansion tax”. Here's the truth and the math.

?Currently the city of Los Angeles imposes a documentary transfer tax on all real estate at a rate of $4.50 per $1000 of consideration and the county of Los Angeles imposes its rate of $1.10 per $1000 for a combined total of $5.60 per $1000 of consideration. If measure ULA passes, effective April 1st 2023, there will be a drastic increase in the transfer tax amounts by imposing an additional tax on the sale of high value real estate properties as reported by Holland and Knight.

?A tax of 4% of the property’s sale value will be imposed at time sale for properties valued at between $5 million and $10 million and it gets worse, if the value of the property is at $10 million or more the sale will be subject to a 5.5% tax. No offsets no deductions and of course it?includes any loans that might be on the real property asset. As of this morning November 14th 2022 the measure looks to be passing with a 54.79% on the yes column according to Ballotpedia. But of course our limp and often impotent county & city of Los Angeles are still counting votes, so stay closely tuned.

?Please note, that if this measure officially passes Measure ULA will become law on January 1, 2023 but not impact transactions until April 1st 2023 according to Ballotpedia. So you are all clear, this is a new tax, it is in addition to the Regular documentary transfer taxes discussed earlier.

?The measure is expected to raise between $600 million to $1.1 billion annually. This really should be rephrased to something more appropriate like, ?the City of Los Angeles is expected to seize and confiscate from property owners $600 million to $1.1 billion. Oh and the money is expected to support homelessness in the city. Don't forget we already have the not so effective programs of measure H which is the quarter cent increase in sales tax, Measure H the Bond Measure and Measure JJJ, ?but I guess the homeless machine and all the tentacles of supporters in both the Non-Profit and Profit side are hungry for more dollars and so they’re all falsely targeting Real Estate ownership. ?It's reported that 92% of the dollars raised by ULA will be used by the Affordable Housing Program and the Homeless Prevention Program to fund affordable housing and rental assistance.

?If homelessness impacts everyone and it does, why don't we all share the burden with a VAT, or increase in utility taxes, cell phone taxes or a federal and state income tax increase? Why is real estate and real estate ownership seemingly always the target? Those advocates who are “pimping” their support have said this “mansion tax” only applies to multi-millionaires and billionaires and that is clear Bull$hit. I can give you or any elected hacks comparable data that shows that a basic 8 unit to 15 unit apartment building investment will be impacted by this tax. That's right, the family that had an opportunity to invest and support their future retirement and their family’s future we'll be financially raped by this measure. The advocates have intentionally and ignorantly supported to seize and confiscate your wealth. This Measure if passed, will slow an already impacted market. Property owners will chose not to sell or exchange & Developers will look to other Cities outside of Los Angeles. If you own properties around Los Angeles, don’t get too comfortable either, because you can bet that EVERY municipality is closely watching this measure to hire their own Lobbyist and Marketing Consultants to launch yet another ballot initiative in Cities across the State.

?In closing, let me give you 2 quotes by Thomas Sowell;

?“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong” and

??“I have never understood why it is ““greed”” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money”

?Remember, Stand for Something or Stand for Nothing. TONY