191–200 of 910 posts
Pufff, Brazil does that since forever. By paying some tax over your land, basically your government is taking it from you every generation or two. Roughly, 2% each year and in 50 years and it's gone.
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Agreed - the many counties in the US already have a portion of the property tax bill coming from a land value tax/Georgianism. California property tax bills have two components [1][2]: - structure/improvement assessed value - land value assessed value The land value component is re-accessed frequently and changes based on comparables (presumably but its mostly black box). The question is to what degree/portion of Geo…
You're forgetting the critical 3rd component of California property tax bills: Prop 13.
The question is to what degree/portion of Georgianism to apply and what to do when the land value component starts going up infinitely that its starts hurting the electorate.
- Do you introduce alternative tax sources (i.e. increase income taxes on billionaires instead as in California)?
- Do you introduce caps on annual land value increases (i.e. Prop 13 as in California) or add a bunch of waivers for specific use cases (i.e. primary homes also know as the homestead exception, day cares as they are starting to do in Texas)?
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In the US, people have the right to property (unlike say, places like Canada https://www.albertalandinstitute.ca/resources/property-right... ). This is a freedom enshrined in the US Constitution and through the fifth amendment. If the Detroit government pushes too hard and rapidly deprives certain parties of their land, they can expect a constitutional challenge.
I think that you may be missing the point of the argument that you are replying to. As I understand it, what they are getting at is that no one created the land, it was already here. Therefore, it's not valid to say that the person who originally claimed the land had a right to it in the same sense that, for example, a farmer has a right to what they grow because of the labor they put into growing it. In effect, the…
Pufff, Brazil does that since forever. By paying some tax over your land, basically your government is taking it from you every generation or two. Roughly, 2% each year and in 50 years and it's gone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"We sit together The mountain and me Until only the mountain remains" -Li Po Maybe the land isn't really yours to begin with?
That's a lot more romantic until you remember it's just going to the government, not some mystical starscape.
I'm a big proponent of Land Value Tax. In theory it is one of the healthiest forms of taxation since supply is fixed. It encourages efficient use of land and discourages owners from squatting on undeveloped land just to reap value from its location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
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I’ve heard economists champion the idea, but I’ve heard little talk about what the tradeoffs are. What are the downsides?
(I'm a big proponent of LVT) The two downsides I'm aware of are difficulty in transitioning to an LVT and difficulty in valuing the land. Transitioning to an LVT means that landowners no longer capture land rents for themselves, which is a massive overnight loss in the value they hold. The solutions there typically tax only the difference in land value versus a baseline assessment. So if a lot is worth $100 before LV…
If the government turns on an LVT, do you trust them to turn off other forms of funding? Or do you think they're just going to decide that their income went up?
I kind of trust them, but I don't have very high confidence that they won't decide that they "need" the extra money, maybe just for some "emergency" situation...
Perhaps someone who has thought about this more can explain how a 'land value tax' differs from existing property tax regimes that explicitly examine the value of improvements and the value of land... This Detroit case is interesting because there are different rates of taxation on the land, but the difference in rate could also be obtained by increasing the land component of a parcel's value.
They are loading the tax burden on the land rather than on structures. So, you can build the Taj Mahal or leave the lot a burned out wreck-- either way you pay the same tax. Many comments on the thread overstate what this is. I happen to think it's interesting, but for reasons unrelated to the article-- it's kinda goofy for the state to tax personal property that happens to be fixed to a location, like a fireplace, s…
The 'goofiness' is on purpose: you tend to get less of what you tax. Most taxes are taxes on some kind of economic activity.
The supply of land is fixed, so you can tax it all you want without impacting economic activity, like working a job or investing capital or even just shopping.
> [...] even if the connection to Detroit's problems is very unclear.
Detroit suffers from a lack of economic activity.
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You're forgetting the critical 3rd component of California property tax bills: Prop 13.
Perhaps my response was a bit long but I did attempt to address it. Perhaps I can elaborate: The question is to what degree/portion of Georgianism to apply and what to do when the land value component starts going up infinitely that its starts hurting the electorate. - Do you introduce alternative tax sources (i.e. increase income taxes on billionaires instead as in California)? - Do you introduce caps on annual land…
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The difference is that someone created the products that I own and I payed them for it. However, no one (at least no one human depending on your religious beliefs) created the land.
Someone created the improvements on it, though. Which is most of what you're paying for when you buy or rent a place to live. This isn't going to change much about landlords. If anything, it will increase the amount of housing rented through landlords, because the land value tax will make it uneconomical for more people to own their own homes. In a high value area, the only people who would be able to do so are the v…