Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s been tried but the political opposition is massive for various reasons.
I find this very interesting, why do you think there’s opposition to it? So property owners don’t get taxed on the real value of their assets?
For instance in Ghana, most land is leasehold not freehold due to the fact that land historically belonged to a family group or community rather than a person. Thus central government schemes to tax land have two arguments against them. First is that no one knows who will be taxed, and since who is taxed is synonymous with who owns the property that’s an added problem as people believe they are being unfairly deprived of their birth rights. Secondly, taxing property which is leasehold is problematic as the people making use of the land aren’t the owners. The owners have generally already spent the leasehold advance, and in the case of 99 year leases are likely already dead. So, the only people you can collect from are the tenants which leads you right back into problem 1.
In practice though, people pay property tax on assessed value of buildings, but it’s not the same as land tax so an unfinished building can be counted as worthless depending on its state.