Why a land-value tax is inevitable • Hacker News Board

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#41

Post by madsbuch » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #25

> 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?

land value tax. Yes, If you decide to buy a plot in downtown San Fransisco you are taxed the same as the neighboring plot with the Salesforce tower.

This is exactly the point he is making: One should put the land to good use. Move the bungalows where land is cheap and tax is low.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#42

Post by foobarian » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #34

jvvlimme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They do - if there could be 5000 more households on the land occupied by the farmers, and paying that much more tax revenue to the town, that could be viewed as a financial strain.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#43

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #40

cortesoft wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those two things are necessary, but not sufficient, to prove something is credible. The best propaganda will meet those two requirements.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#44

Post by cool_dude85 » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

mr_cyborg wrote: post #16

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?

Homeowners whose physical home makes up a lot of the value of their property would probably see a decrease, and those whose home makes up a small amount of the value of their property would probably see an increase. The broad idea is to incentivize actually using land instead of sitting on empty lots waiting to flip them.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#45

Post by DeonPenny » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

This makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims. Like the bond market is saturated that seems the opposite of true. This also claims theres been a high inflation but that doesn't seem to be true either based on any metric.

I think the one thing is clear and I agree with is taxes increases capital outflow. But my biggest issue is with the central premise that is taken at face value. That the government needs more money. I don't think it does. The US government especially has far to much money and waste most of it.

So I'd say instead of trying to find sneaky ways of taking more of the citizen money maybe incentive it to be use to create more opportunities. Instead of taking from some to give to other incentive opportunities so those who have will willingly give opportunities to those who don't

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#46

Post by supernova87a » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

There was a convincing op-ed in WSJ a few years ago about how in all the states that are facing public sector defaults, the ultimate payer of these debts will be homeowners. Since basically the only place left for most governments to go is property value (unless they have huge businesses they can tax).

And it is worse in the poorer states, because they don't have high home values to cushion the blow to the individual taxpayer.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#47

Post by tomp » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

DeonPenny wrote: post #29

Ericson2314 wrote: post #11

1. UBI 2. LVT 3. Environmental externality taxes That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.

We went from riding horses to computer and space ship so I don't know if those will have the same impact capitalism has especially if we have less money for innovation

Which of these would result in “less money for innovation”?

Carbon tax can be made revenue neutral and will net benefit innovative companies and/or customers buying their products.

LVT is literally taxing non-productive, limited, legally hereditary but actually “common heritage” capital. No damage there.

I’m quite opposed to UBI myself but I think there’s plenty of other ways to improve the social safety net with less opportunity of abuse, the net benefit being that people are less concerned with staying alive (low Maslow need) and free to be creative (high Maslow need).

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#48

Post by kashkhan » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #11

1. UBI 2. LVT 3. Environmental externality taxes That's all we need to fix the 21st century. Simple as hell so basically immune to regulatory capture, and will usher in a rate of progress we haven't seen in 100 years, if ever.

Add MMT to the list.

LVT is good for state governments that don't have their own currency.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#49

Post by yenwodyah » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

Rickvst wrote: post #18

Land-value tax doesn't have huge inefficiencies like some other taxes. But the hard part is assessing "value". How should land value be decided? The book "Radical Markets" has some good insights on how to find the value of every plot of land by using markets.

Most societies already levy property taxes on real estate, including on unimproved land. I don't know how they assess the value of that land, but they must have a working method for it.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#50

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sat, Dec 05, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #46

There was a convincing op-ed in WSJ a few years ago about how in all the states that are facing public sector defaults, the ultimate payer of these debts will be homeowners. Since basically the only place left for most governments to go is property value (unless they have huge businesses they can tax). And it is worse in the poorer states, because they don't have high home values to cushion the blow to the individual…

There are big huge businesses we aren't adequately taxing: Big tech.

When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more.

And Jeff Bezos does not need more money.