It's fundamentally a tax on wealthier people among a community.

We really going to sit here in 2026 and pretend the people who wrote down all these rhetorical circumlocutions weren't just making up language to justify their supposed expertise/their social moat? The entire American system is rich families manipulating the legal system to screw have nots. Whole lot of have nots defend a system that doesn't care they exist.

Strip away the ornamental language of the law and just see the ground truth; a person with means to buy the house pays a tax on it all. A poor person never pays a tax because they never own a home.

What is this? Why does everyone feel like they stepped out of the middle ages where dark tongues still exist and the ornate incantations of superstitious people still rule?

It doesn't need to be logically as complicated and intentionally obscured (in my opinion legalese has been to manipulate the illiterate which were the majority back in the day).

Such social conservatism is holding society back.