Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Henry George - a 19th century political economist - proposed exactly this, and suggested the only thing that should be taxed should be land That may have made sense in the 19th century when agriculture dominated the economy, but it’s irrelevant today. At scale it becomes a tax on how space-inefficient your business is. Bad news for farmers, great news for the business running a 1000-person operation out of a skyscr…
Land taxes are based on the value of the land, not the size of the land. The property tax system already performs land value assessments. Land taxes are highly progressive. Note that land taxes are only assessed on the value of the land, not the value of any buildings on the land. This incentivizes land owners to put the land to its highest and best use.
Maybe in the 19th century, where this idea originated. Economics of business have changed too significantly to use it as a one size fits all taxation scheme.
It may have made sense when revenue was somewhat proportional to the amount of land a business occupied, but that no longer holds true in the age of skyscrapers and digital revenue generation.
An internet company in a 10-story building would love this scheme, though, because they could generate billions in revenue but be taxed at the same rate as a local neighborhood of people who owned their homes for a few decades.
Land-only taxes may have been an interesting idea in the 19th century, but they aren’t relevant to a modern economy.