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Why a land-value tax is inevitable

medium.com

31–40 of 322 posts

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#31

> The LVT is not the same as a property tax, as it does not punish those who put the land to use; it taxes only the land, not the structure built on top of it. This sounds regressive. So someone with a bungalow on their property pays the same tax as someone with a 40 story apartment building?

It isn’t regressive, because poor people don’t typically own valuable property.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#32

> The LVT is not the same as a property tax, as it does not punish those who put the land to use; it taxes only the land, not the structure built on top of it. This sounds regressive. So someone with a bungalow on their property pays the same tax as someone with a 40 story apartment building?

If someone is hoarding land on which a 40 story apartment building would be profitable, yes, they should be taxed for it

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#33

> The LVT is not the same as a property tax, as it does not punish those who put the land to use; it taxes only the land, not the structure built on top of it. This sounds regressive. So someone with a bungalow on their property pays the same tax as someone with a 40 story apartment building?

It's only sounds that we because there is so much yeoman farmer -> suburban everyman stuff in our heads.

The land is our collective inheritence, so someone with 1 story bungalow on highly desireable land is actually extremely selfish and decedent in their misuse of the commons.

To get less moral and more mathematical, developers can lessen their tax only to the extent that the flood the market with floors pace, devaluing the good they are selling (floor space, not land space). This forces and equilibrium where the vast majority of people do better than today.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#34

LVT has to be mixed with an occupancy tax however. If I own a large field capable of supporting 10 homes right in the middle of the suburbs, I shouldn't be paying the equivalent taxes that 10 households should be paying. You have to separate out the taxes used to pay for services like trash from the taxes meant for ownership of the land. (although you could argue that large parts of the government are needed to servi…

You most certainly should be paying the equivalent of 10 households. You deny 9 others the ability to use the land. If you have real use for the land, paying the lvt won’t be an issue. If you can’t use it efficiently, an lvt will incentivise you to sell what you don’t use.

I disagree, if a town with 1000 households are interspersed with 100 farms, those 100 farms should not be paying an equal amount of money to the town finances as the 1000 households. It just doesn't make sense. They should certainly be paying for the right to have exclusive access to that land, but those 100 farmers do not put as much of a financial strain on the town budget as those 1000 households

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#35

> The LVT is not the same as a property tax, as it does not punish those who put the land to use; it taxes only the land, not the structure built on top of it. This sounds regressive. So someone with a bungalow on their property pays the same tax as someone with a 40 story apartment building?

The idea is to tax the opportunity cost of the land. If Jeff Bezos decides he wants to build a bungalow in the middle of Manhattan that is his prerogative, but he shouldn’t get to pay less taxes than someone who put the land to more economical use as a 40 story apartment building.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#36

> The LVT is not the same as a property tax, as it does not punish those who put the land to use; it taxes only the land, not the structure built on top of it. This sounds regressive. So someone with a bungalow on their property pays the same tax as someone with a 40 story apartment building?

[deleted]

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#37

I’m struggling to envision how this would impact homeowners differently than the current property tax paradigm. If I have a house and the value of the property goes up, my property taxes increase. If I were to sell a house at market rate, theoretically it would be reflective of what rate it was being taxed at. How would this same situation play out with a land-value tax?

Perversely, if it was based on what the value of the property would be without any building on it, in lots of popular areas it would be more than the cost of the property tax because people will pay a premium for land where they can build what they want if the area is popular.

So I guess it can't be that way, as it would piss a lot of people off.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#38

I’m struggling to envision how this would impact homeowners differently than the current property tax paradigm. If I have a house and the value of the property goes up, my property taxes increase. If I were to sell a house at market rate, theoretically it would be reflective of what rate it was being taxed at. How would this same situation play out with a land-value tax?

About the same.

AIUI, they see a few benefits:

- it will ensure someone holding onto empty land for future use will have to pay at the same "rate" as you do. They don't get a discount simply because they choose not to use the land. If you aim to collect the same total amount of revenue, this would lower your tax.

- Use of land would be better optimized if there was no disincentive to build an expensive (eg bigger/denser) building. IMO this is flawed in that local land use rules are the bigger issue compared to tax policy.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#39

I’m struggling to envision how this would impact homeowners differently than the current property tax paradigm. If I have a house and the value of the property goes up, my property taxes increase. If I were to sell a house at market rate, theoretically it would be reflective of what rate it was being taxed at. How would this same situation play out with a land-value tax?

If the value goes up when all else stays the same, it is actually the land value that goes up.

If you completely renovate the house, a property tax would go up but the lvt stays the same.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would I, but that really doesn't have anything to do with the article. Let's judge it on its own merits.

How do you judge an article by its merits when it involves something complex that you don’t already fully understand? I don’t have the time or desire to become an expert in tax policy, so I have to use some other signal to measure the merits of this article. At some point, that signal will come down to reputation of SOMEBODY or SOMETHING, and looking at the other articles posted by this site is a good starting point.

You can determine if the article is internally self-consistent and externally consistent with your priors.
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