Driving through northern Maine and NH, you notice a funny thing: lots of occupied houses with front doors…opening onto nothing. There are no front porches. The locals tell a story about these houses-it seems that a house without a front porch is considered “unfinished”, and as such, qualifies for a lower rperty tax rate. As money is tight up there, the homeowner never gets round to building the porch, so saves money on property taxes.
I kind of doubt this-the town assessors would have caught on to the scam long ago.
Any “Mainiacs” care to comment?
Similar story here (see first “other answer”), but pertaining to Greece.
FWIW, we heard the same thing in Cairo.
In the US, I have a hard time buying it. If the building isn’t “finished,” the owner won’t get a certificate of occupancy. But who knows what loopholes local codes may have.
there are weird tax loopholes all over the us. one i remember from texas is that there was an odd tax on “extra” doors. so people build very large windows where the sills are just a few inches off the floor to a few inches from the ceiling. you could just walk out the window onto the side porch.
one house had windows on lifts so the window would sink flush with the floor making it easy to get in and out. the window would be lifted up when you wanted to close it.
this was in galveston, not sure if it held in the rest of texas or if the laws have changed.