To call the sprawling $12.9 million Buckhead estate that serial tech entrepreneur Tom Noonan sold in March a mansion is an understatement.
The 12 leafy acres of private land include a 14,000-square-foot, seven-bedroom house, a horse barn, riding trails, salt-water pool, tennis court – and even a par-three golf hole.
Under Georgia law, the real estate transfer tax was approximately $12,900, since the state taxes all real property sales at 0.01% across the board. Had Atlanta been subject to Los Angeles’ new 5.95% transfer tax for properties valued over $10 million, the transfer tax on Noonan’s mansion would instead have been a whopping $767,550.
In a nation starved for affordable housing and with an increasing number of homeless people living in their cars or on the streets—is it fair to ask for a big tax hike on the homes of multimillionaires and billionaires to fund housing programs, as the new L.A. real estate sales tax does? Or will it scare real estate investment away to places where taxes are lower?
More American cities and states are weighing those questions. Since 2018, progressive-leaning cities and counties have passed or considered a wave of so-called mansion taxes—additional taxes on high-end properties. According to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a liberal think tank, at least 17 local governments are now levying these kinds of taxes–some just on residential property and others on all real estate transactions. A dozen more are considering them.
Should Atlanta be one of them?
The rise of the mansion tax
Most excise taxes on real estate sales throughout the country are subject to the same flat rate. The state of Georgia’s rate is $1 for the first $1,000 of the sale price and 10 cents for each additional $100—no matter the property’s price. That works out to a property sales tax rate of 0.01%.
That means Tom Noonan–a co-founder of Internet Security Systems, which sold for…
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