Maybe a house tax should not be based on the value of the house, then?
You could easily imagine a flatrate per square meter. Or a flatrate per capita.
For the "stronger shoulders should carry more" argument, I'd look at the income from the property. If someone owns a collection of old paintings, why should they be taxed based on their value?
> If someone owns a collection of old paintings, why should they be taxed based on their value?
If someone owns a collection of paintings which they're not trying to leverage as an asset, there's no reason for their market value to be known. But if they're putting the paintings up as collateral for loans or something else that demands our participation, then they can pay the rest of us for that privilege by paying taxes on the value of the paintings. Otherwise what reason do we have to acknowledge their property rights?
Perhaps at one time you could've said: "they'll, in turn, acknowledge yours." But so many of us have no property, so that deal is deteriorating.
> You could easily imagine a flatrate per square meter.
This is a good idea since it doesn't distort economic decisions, but has not been implemented in many places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax