In a market economy, trade is based on bilateral willingness, a rule that also suits house transactions. But land is not renewable. If some people own too much land, others' rights to land use will be affected and even future generations' lives will be affected. It is international practice to ask rich people who consume greater land resources to undertake more social responsibilities and obligations.

A property tax actually adds to the costs of home ownership and in nature it is a readjustment of resource allocations. China desperately needs a housing tax framework under which those who make use of greater land resources pay higher prices, so as to protect the rights and interests of common people.

Fu Weigang (Oriental Morning Post): With the development of urbanization in China, the value of real estate is rising. Rising property prices undoubtedly increase homeowners' wealth. In recent years, there has been a growing number of disputes concerning housing demolition and allocation. The core of the disputes is the assessed value of the assets: Residents want more compensation while developers and the government hope to pay less.

A property tax will to some extent solve these disputes. It is a kind of proportional tax, by which homeowners pay taxes at fixed proportion in accordance with the value of their housing properties. Once a person has paid the property tax, he or she can ask compensation on this basis whenever their homes are acquired by the government. In this sense, the property tax will prevent the government from arbitrary property requisition.

On the other hand, in order to pay less tax, some homeowners tend to undervalue their properties. This poses a great challenge to taxation authorities, who do not have enough human and financial resources to do the job of assessing the value of everyone's property. The existence of the property tax will inevitably stimulate the development of related intermediary agencies.

Not a panacea

Feng Haining (Daily Economy News): In my opinion, it is against common sense to expect to curb housing prices through a tax on the value of property holdings. Although such a tax will discourage speculative house purchases, we all know that prices are not totally decided only by cost, but also by supply and demand. When housing prices keep rocketing, speculators can still make huge profits despite the levying of a property tax. Speculative investors will surely transfer additional costs to homebuyers.

Some economists believe a property tax will increase local governments' tax revenues and save them from dependence on selling land. But no one can ensure local governments will feel satisfied with earnings from such a tax. Instead of curbing housing prices, the new tax is very likely to push them up.

Some people argue that property tax will help narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. This is nothing but an assumption. Property tax has been levied for many years in the United States, but the gap is still big there. Obviously, it is not the key to narrowing the wealth gap.

Yuan Dong (Shanghai Securities News): Property tax has existed for a long time in Western countries. It is a item that means to regulate social wealth distribution. But even in those countries, property tax does little to balance social wealth distribution. The best result is it has increased government revenues.

In the United States, for example, a well-developed property tax system had failed to effectively curb housing price surges and rein in Americans' passion for speculation in real estate. It's quite possible that past decades' property tax revenues accounted for only a small portion of the U.S. Government's costs in bailing out businesses that suffered heavy losses in the subprime credit crunch in 2008 and sequent economic crisis. After the bursting of real estate bubbles, low and middle-income earners were the hardest-hit victims, while the rich were less affected.

Those who call for a property tax hope it will effectively press those who have more than their own living space to give up extra housing, so as to reduce speculation and adjust wealth distribution. But in China only a small number of people own multiple apartments. Although there is certain number of sold but unoccupied houses in big cities, a property tax will not serve to change the situation.

Ai Caiqin (Procuratorial Daily): Nowadays, ordinary Chinese people are still not very rich. In order to buy a home, some families have to use all their savings and some even have to take out huge mortgages. At present, most Chinese only have only one apartment for family use. If these people also have to pay a property tax, it's undoubtedly an extra burden on them.

Besides, a property tax will do little to curb housing prices when supply falls short of demand. People know investing in the property market is still a very lucrative business. Few real estate speculators will quit the market because of only a property tax, because they can easily transfer the burden to homebuyers.

Liu Chang (China Youth Daily): The reason given by proponents of the property tax is that a lot of countries in the world have adopted it. But in those countries, land is private property and the does not profit at all from land, so it can only take in some revenues through property tax. Moreover, governments of those countries tax property holdings once and for all. In China, however, the government that owns the land and developers have to pay the government so they can use the land to build residential properties. If the government levies property tax after collecting land transfer fees, it is double taxation. This is not international practice.