What if you've paid off your mortgage and now housing is essentially only maintenance and utilities. Removing rent cost would make that money last. I wonder if the people behind this have that notion.
No, this is different from what happens in the US.
Let's say I buy a house in the US and pay cash (no mortgage, no financing). I now own this house and decide to live in it. I will have to pay local property taxes, but I do not have to pay any income tax.
Now, let's say I instead rented out the house to someone else (and lived somewhere else), I would be making income on the rent, and therefore paying income tax on the rental income.
In Switzerland, if you live in the house that you own (the first example), you are considered to be renting it to yourself. So you have to pay income tax on the market rent for your home, even if you are both the tenant and the landlord.
EDIT: For the record, I don't know why you're being downvoted for asking for clarification.
You're missing the point completely. Not having to deal with rent means the money from basic income can go further than for anyone who doesn't own their own housing.
Meaning it's essentially for rich kids who've inherited their own housing, or those with enough dispensable income to pay off their place.
Basic Income in this scenario wouldn't help the poorest, it would help the rich enough to get further with that money.
I am not against Basic Income, but it has to be in a situation where the poor will benefit from it, not the rich enough to make the best out of the money.
This seems like just another shit the modern bourgeois leftist have cooked up for themselves thinking it applies to the poorest. What a joke.
A person rich enough to inherit a house at a young age isn't going to notice the relatively tiny minimal income. They are far more likely to oppose the taxes necessary to support minimum income than they are to be a secret motivating army behind it. It's not productive to invent unreasonable stories of unfairness just to create an internal rage however exciting that may be.
If you're concerned about possible unfairness of minimum income then you would need to look at people whose medical expenses could exceed the minimum income, people who are mentally incapable of buying the right resources, people who have dependent children and unchecked market forces that would allow prices to rise beyond what the minimum income could afford.
The last one is the biggest problem as it would effectively transfer wealth from taxpayers briefly through the poorest people to the wealthy via increased profits and still leave some people unprovided for.
Money is money. How one uses it is up to the individual. If the person took out a mortgage and paid it off after 30 years, there is nothing immoral about it and certainly doesn't prevent another person from doing the same. A paid off home does not need to be a mansion. A modest flat affords the freedom also.
If a given person could not afford a mortgage or a down payment, adding more money to that persons income increases the chance they will save enough to do so, not reduces it.
Home ownership isn't very high in Switzerland (and at least in urban areas there aren't many apartments below 1M). And you have to pay income tax on your rent anyway (even if to yourself).
For those lucky enough to have managed to secure a place without rent/mortage -> essentially those lucky few with ownership <- will get the best out of basic income.
Not necessarily if income tax rates are offset to compensate. Also 2k/mo might not make much of a difference for wealthy people (so they'd still need to earn money to support their lifestyle).
