&gt; &quot;In the context of property used as a residence&quot;, most European countries do not tax first homes, end of story.<p>I&#x27;m not talking about sales taxes on the sale price of a home; the US doesn&#x27;t tax those either.  I&#x27;m talking about property taxes, as in the taxes typically assessed by a local government to property owners as a percentage of the appraised value of their property.  I&#x27;m saying that such property taxes produce various undesirable effects (as mentioned several comments up).<p>That&#x27;s orthogonal to questions of how to deal with people owning, buying, or selling multiple homes.  It may or may not make sense to apply different rules in those cases, such as not providing an exemption for sales taxes on such properties.  (Though you&#x27;d have to be careful there to not cause problems with rental prices.)