Want to kill the budding recovery in home sales? Start taxing home sellers, who are still a scarce commodity these days, even as buyers flood back into the market.

But that is just what Gov. Deval Patrick wants to do as part of his proposal to pump an additional $2 billion into state coffers by hiking a range of taxes. Tucked into the proposal is a little-noticed provision that would repeal the exemption for home sales from capital gains taxes. As a result, sellers would have to fork over hundreds or even thousands of dollars from whatever gains they manage to eke out from the sale of their home in market still in the early stages of recovery.

Of course, the one seller who may escape the taxman is the governor himself. He is in the process of selling his $1.5 million home in Milton and is likely to close before any legislation should pass. Good thing, since Patrick bought the house for $562,889 in 1989 and could

face tens of thousands in taxes.

“It is an especially bad time to whack homeowners, when property sales and home values are just starting to recover,” said Rob Authier, chief executive of the Massachusetts Association of Realtors. “We think it’s a bad idea.”

Scaring Off Sellers

As Patrick looks for ways to pay for various pet projects, from new roads to subway cars, home sales are a juicy target.

Currently, sellers are spared paying taxes on up to $250,000 in gains from the sale of a house, a number that rises to $500,000 for a married couple filing jointly.

The governor’s budget people estimate they can bring in another $239 million by forcing home sellers to cough up 6.25 percent of whatever modest gains they pocket.

While Patrick has pitched his tax proposal as somehow shielding the middle class, it would instead go after a major source of investment and retirement income for many folks in the middle.

But given the tentative state of the rebound in home sales and prices, it would also have a potentially disastrous impact on the real estate market.

While sales and prices are recovering, the number of homes on the market plunged roughly 25 percent last year in Massachusetts, with 2013 so far bringing more of the same, according to MAR.

Buyers are ready to rock and roll, but too many sellers are still sitting on the sidelines, unsure whether the time has finally arrived, after years of gloomy headlines, to jump in and try their luck.

The prospect of having to pay taxes on any gains from the sale of their home could very well prompt some sellers to decide to stay put, notes Alex Coon, market manager for the Boston area office of Redfin.

Homeowners who bought years ago and have built up large amounts of equity would suddenly face the prospect of a big tax bill on their gains.

But even harder-hit may be homeowners who bought a few years ago and who may have found themselves underwater in the aftermath of the real estate crash and Great Recession, he contends.

Some of these homeowners may finally be back above water, but may be scared back onto the sidelines if they realize that any small gain they might have reaped will get chewed up in taxes, according to Coon.

If you think home sellers are not sensitive to various hands dipping into their gains, think again, with the 5 percent commission that real estate brokers take already a significant source of resentment among some.

“The fact of the matter is that margins will be thin for many people,” Coon said. “Having any tax on that would have a negative effect.”

Driving Up Prices

But the governor’s push to tax home sales may also have even more serious, long-term consequences: Scaring off home sellers is likely to plunge an already anemic number of homes on the market even lower.

And as inventory continues to dwindle, competition between buyers for the few available properties out there is likely to further push up prices.

That, in turn, could hurt buyers as well as sellers. While prices in the Boston area came down somewhat from the bubble years’ highs, they are now slowly and steadily marching back up again, and are within 15 percent of their peak.

In fact, some upscale western suburbs have seen home prices catch up and pass previous records set during the frenzied market of the mid-2000s.

And here again, Patrick’s proposal to tax home sales by driving up prices would hurt the very people the governor claims to be trying to help.

The hardest-hit would again be middle-class buyers already struggling for a toehold in one of the nation’s most expensive housing markets, where you need to pull down at least $100,000 to afford the median-priced house, which hit $300,000 in December, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

Meanwhile, more than a few of these would-be middle-income buyers would take a hit from another piece of Patrick’s big tax plan, which would eliminate the deduction for child-care expenses.

It is an expense that, for many families, is only rivaled by their mortgage.

Taxing home sellers is a turkey of an idea – how anyone would think it is a good idea, given the tentative recovery in the real estate market, is beyond me.

But if Patrick is truly serious about making home sellers pay capital gains taxes, he should be a leader and set an example.

The governor is on track to reap a pretty substantial gain from the sale of his Milton home.

And if he really believes in this, then he should voluntarily fork over part of his gains, equal to the state’s capital gains tax, just like he wants everyone else to do.

To do anything else would be either be shamelessly hypocritical, or just plain out of touch.

Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com