[hackerspaces] [Eviction] Call for Support for les Hauts Lieux

[Koen Martens]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 02:49:33PM -0400, Christopher J. Pilkington wrote:
> I suspect that these landlords then claim business losses on their taxes
> for these unoccupied properties.  I don't understand the tax code very
> well, but maybe someone can back up my suspicions.  This sounds like a
> very easy way to manufacture business loss, and arbitrarily exempt an
> entity from almost all if not all tax.

Something similar seems to be the case in The Netherlands. An architect-
friend of mine once tried to explain this to me. There are lots of vacant
properties, multi-storey office buildings, around here. If they keep the 
place vacant, its somethign they can write of as loss. 

If they start renting it out for just a small part, it becomes an operational
asset, that they will have to maintain and a whole different tax structure
applies. So it only makes sense to them to rent out the entire building, not
smaller parts of it. But the market for entire multiple-storey office buildings
is more than satuarated already.

Add to this, that lots of new office buildings are being built even though
there's zillions of square metres of existing office space. Why rent old
shit when a new building does about as much per square metre?

In fact, right around the corner of my house, they're building a 60 metre high
office building (43.000 m^2) even though there is no-one interested in renting 
it. Just to make it possible to build it, the city now is pouring tax money into 
this project. Irony: 20 meters from the new building an existing office building
of many-thousand m^2 (above the central station) has been empty for years.

At least it looks spectacular:

http://www.denhaagnieuwcentraal.nl/typo3temp/pics/d5f00fc4e3.jpg

Gr,

Koen