China considers US-style property taxes

WSJ story (Fung) on China thinking through what it will eventually take to control the housing market, which is booming along the coast (see chart below) and presumably increasing the coastal-interior divide.

China has real estate taxes now, and is considering jacking them up, says Fung.  But the real rule-set reset would be to shift to US-style annual taxes, which "would mark a significant escalation of its struggle to cool down a booming property market now widely being described as a bubble."

My guess:  it'll take the bubble bursting for China to make this bold move. Developers vehemently oppose the move, and nobody wants to piss them off as construction is a bright spot right now.  Sticking in the new type of taxes now might just prick the bubble.

Still, expect the government to do this eventually (Chongqing's city gov has proposed it to Beijing), with the first targets, according to the piece, being second homes (luxury tax really designed to tamp down on flipping or speculation).  The leadership fears the rising sense of coastal-interior/have-have-not divide, but is adamant about encouraging individual home ownership--a very middle-class-empowering status.