Grassroot bucks populist push for tax on so-called empty homes
The new Honolulu City Council proposal, Bill 46, is slightly updated from versions going back to 2020, but the practical flaws remain
from Grassroot Institute, August 10, 2024
Public testimony ran 20-to-1 on Wednesday in favor of a property tax surcharge on so-called empty homes at the Honolulu City Council's first reading of Bill 46, with only the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii offering comments in opposition.
The stated goals of the proposed tax are to encourage owners to rent or sell vacant homes, increase the supply of homes and raise funds for affordable housing and homelessness.
Grassroot Director of Strategic Campaigns Ted Kefalas testified that "Grassroot believes an empty homes tax would be difficult to administer, create substantial paperwork problems for Honolulu residents — to the extent even of comprising an invasion of privacy — and likely not achieve its housing goals."
Kefalas said the tax might be useful for generating tax revenue, but it would be almost impossible to quantify how much.
"Do we really want to create a headache for the city administration and city property owners in hopes of raising an unquantified sum of money — especially when there are easier ways to go about raising revenue?" he asked.
Moreover, he added, there are more effective ways to produce affordable housing, –– and at no cost to Oahu taxpayers — such as removing or updating the many state and county regulations that hinder homebuilding, as noted in Grassroot's December 2023 report “How to facilitate more homebuilding in Hawaii.”
Nevertheless, all nine of the Council members voted to move the bill forward for further public hearings.
By way of background, Bill 46 is a slightly revised version of Honolulu Bill 9, introduced in February 2022, which was preceded in 2020 by Bill 76. Arguments in favor of both those failed were addressed fully in Grassroot's May 2023 report "The 'empty homes' theory of Hawaii's housing crisis."
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Reject invasive empty homes tax, consider housing alternatives
from Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
The following testimony was submitted by the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii for consideration by the Honolulu City Council on Aug. 7, 2024.
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Aug. 7, 2024, 9 a.m.
Honolulu Hale
To: Honolulu City Council
Tommy Waters, Chair
Esther Kiaʻāina, Vice Chair
From: Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
Ted Kefalas, Director of Strategic Campaigns
RE: Bill 46 (2024) — RELATING TO REAL PROPERTY TAXATION
Aloha Chair Waters, Vice-Chair Kiaʻāina and other members of the Council,
The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii opposes Bill 46 (2024), which would create a so-called empty homes tax as a supplement to any other property taxes currently paid by owners of certain properties in Honolulu’s residential zoning districts.
The surcharge would be equal to 1% of the property’s assessed value for the first year the tax is in effect, 2% for the second year and 3% for all tax years thereafter.
The stated goals of Bill 46 (2024) are to encourage owners to rent or sell vacant homes, increase the supply of homes and raise funds for affordable housing and homelessness.
Grassroot believes that an empty homes tax would be difficult to administer, create substantial paperwork problems for Honolulu residents — to the extent even of comprising an invasion of privacy — and likely not achieve its housing goals.
The first problem here is definitional: What is an empty home? The bill states that “a dwelling unit on residential property is an empty home unless it qualifies for any of the following exemptions.”
It then proceeds to list 14 exemptions, including for homes used as principal residences for more than six months a year; rented for more than six months a year; for sale or recently sold; subject to court proceedings; determined to be a “substandard building”; licensed by the state as a halfway house; and other discretionary reasons.
Basically, there could be more than 14 exemptions, there could be fewer — as shown by the variations in other jurisdictions that have been experimenting with such a tax.[1]
Beyond that, this proposed empty homes tax would leave it to the Honolulu Department of Budget and Fiscal Services to determine whether a property was truly vacant.
Under the bill, the department would be required to mail a form to all owners of residentially zoned properties on Oahu that the owners would have to fill out and declare whether their homes are empty.
Basically, the presumption would be that a dwelling on Oahu is empty unless its owner qualifies for an exemption, which would put the burden squarely on property owners to prove their status.
Further, according to the bill, the department would be empowered to conduct “audits and investigations to determine the validity of property status declarations made for any residential property,” and could require “owners or occupants of the property to provide information at any time up to three years after the tax year in which the empty homes tax is due.”
Such information would include but not be limited to government-issued personal identification, driver’s license, vehicle registration, utilities records, mailing addresses used for personal bank and credit accounts, tenancy agreements, occupancy agreements, proof of income and general excise taxes paid for rental income, proof of receiving or providing medical care by the owner or tenant that precluded occupancy of the dwelling unit, death certificates, court orders and proceedings, proof of military orders of deployment, and possibly many other personal records.
Frankly, we at the Grassroot Institute think most people would consider having to provide such information as a condition of living in their own homes an egregious if not unconstitutional invasion of privacy.
Privacy concerns aside, the magnitude of all this required paperwork, investigating and enforcement would be enormous. For fiscal 2025, there are 251,787 parcels in Honolulu’s Residential class and 28,058 in its Residential A class.[2] This doesn’t count short-term rentals or bed and breakfasts that might exist in residential zones.
It seems reasonable to ask whether the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services has or could ever have the staff to sort through more than 280,000 annual declarations. There is no mention in the bill of how many new full-time employees the city might have to hire to implement and enforce this proposed new tax.
And consider how this might affect homeowners who for some reason forget to fill out the annual declaration or make a so-called “false claim.” The bill proposes a civil penalty of “not less than $250 and not more than $10,000 for each day that the violation continues, upon reasonable notice,” with the “penalties under this section [to] become a part of the empty homes tax and must be collected as a part thereof.”
Bill 46 (2024) would provide a grace period for owners who forget to file, but this would only exist for the first year of the empty homes tax; all forgetful homeowners in future years would have to file appeals that could be costly and time-consuming.
In addition, the bill says, any person who fails to timely pay the real property empty homes tax would be subject to nonpayment penalties equal to 1% of the empty homes tax due and payable within the first year of nonpayment, 2% within the second year of nonpayment, and 3% of all accrued empty homes taxes for the third year.
After three years of nonpayment, the city would be allowed to seize the property in question and sell it to raise the money needed to pay the delinquent tax amount.
As for the goal of providing more housing, Grassroot pointed out in its May 2023 policy brief, “The ‘empty homes’ theory of Hawaii’s housing crisis,” that there have been only two robust econometric studies of the effectiveness of empty homes taxes in serving this goal, and they reached contradictory conclusions.[3]
Grassroot’s study did acknowledge such a tax could be useful for generating tax revenue, but it would be almost impossible to quantify how much.
Do we really want to create a headache for the city administration and city property owners in hopes of raising an unquantified sum of money — especially when there are easier ways to go about raising revenue?
Moreover, there are effective ways to produce affordable housing — at no cost to Oahu taxpayers. Grassroot discussed some of those ways in its December 2023 report “How to facilitate more homebuilding in Hawaii,” which essentially recommended removing or updating the many state and county regulations that hinder homebuilding.
We encourage the Council to adopt those recommendations before turning to an untested, administratively complicated new tax.
Please consider, too, that Honolulu already has an implicit empty homes tax.
The fact is that anyone choosing to leave their home empty for more than six months out of the year is already forgoing more than $12,000 in rental income, based on average rents.[4]
This suggests that anyone who leaves their home empty has good reason to do so, and that an empty homes tax surcharge might not move these properties onto the rental or for-sale market.
All things considered, the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii urges you to reject this Bill 46 (2024) and focus on alternatives that have good track records at meeting the goal of producing more housing.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify.
Ted Kefalas
Director of Strategic Campaigns
Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
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[1] Jensen Ahokovi and Mark Coleman, “The empty homes theory of Hawaii’s housing crisis: A tax on empty homes might increase rental occupancies and generate tax revenues, but there is no evidence showing it would increase the state’s housing supply or reduce housing or rental prices,” Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, May 2023, p. 8.
[2] “Number of Records by Land Use Class for Tax Year 2024-2025,” City and County of Honolulu, July 2024.
[3] Jensen Ahokovi and Mark Coleman, “The ‘empty homes’ theory of Hawaii’s housing crisis,” p. 11.
[4] “What is the average rent in Honolulu, HI?” Apartments.com, accessed Aug. 2, 2024.