My colleague @bposton and I spent a while investigating one of the deepest inequalities in California housing and tax policy — so deep that U.S. Supreme Court justices and others say it's like medieval feudalism (1/13) latimes.com/politics/la-po…
California lets homeowners pass their low property tax bills to their children. And it can go on forever. So future generations of Californians whose ancestors purchased houses decades ago will continue to pay property taxes based on values established in the 1970s. (2/13)
The financial benefits of this practice for families who owned California homes in the 1970s are stunning. A heir of the billionaire Annenberg family has saved more than $500,000 due to the tax break for her $10m Beverly Hills home. And her kids can get the tax break, too. (3/13)
You don't even have to live in your parents' house to get the tax break. In fact, most heirs don't. Instead, they rent them or use them as 2nd homes. We found as many as 63% of heirs in LA use their parents' homes as investments — a similar trend in other coastal counties. (4/13)
Not only CA's elite get these benefits. Hundreds of thousands received it just in the last decade. We found a 73-year-old retired park ranger from Berkeley who inherited his parents' Sonoma rental. He owes $2.5k annually in taxes and listed the property for $3k a month. (5/13)
So we’ve got a system where children of landowners benefit simply because they’re children of landowners. Some U.S. Supreme Court justices said the whole thing was aristocratic. (6/13) 
If landowning families are the beneficiaries, who loses? Local governments for one. In L.A. alone, schools, cities and county government lost $280 million in tax revenue last year, we found. That’s less money for roads, police, fire, etc. (7/13)
But others who lose are those who don’t have access to this benefit, namely young people and renters. California’s housing affordability crisis hurts them the most. Homeowner families tend to be wealthier and whiter with more access to wealth. (8/13)
Even those most likely to support the inheritance tax break have real concerns. Back in 1985, the author of the tax break said it was about keeping properties in families and leveling the playing field with corporations. (9/13) documentcloud.org/documents/4775…
But today, the tax break’s author said he and lawmakers didn’t understand its long-term consequences. The guy in charge of the organization that passed Prop. 13 was shocked, too. (10/13)
To be sure, many adult children have used this benefit to live in their parents’ homes — and they might have been taxed out without it. But many more heirs, we’ve shown, use it to make money. And it’s a gap between homeowners and non-homeowners that’s only going to grow. (11/13)
If you’re interested in how we did this story, check out our piece on our methodology. (12/13) latimes.com/local/lanow/la…
And if you like understanding complex policy issues with fun videos instead of reading, we did this (13/FIN)
Also, here’s a preview of me later tonight
