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Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

economist.com

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Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#681

Post by nonethewiser »

fastball wrote: post #635
robertlagrant wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This measure will be harmful. Not just due to the person being a bureaucrat who can be bad at their job and/or influenced to achieve certain outcomes; not just because the info is instantly out of date on purchasing decisions; not just because the pricing info is specific to that purchaser . But because everything like this adds more drag into systems that have enough drag already. People can't do anything useful if…

Again, property taxes already exist. This is simpler .

Do you think taxing by sub components of land would be simpler yet? Maybe we should tax by rock content.

Or maybe a tax based on more things has nothing to do with complexity. The largest market is for land and structures. That makes it the simplest to value.

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#682

Post by bluedino »

xienze wrote: post #455
zip1234 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detroit has blight. LVT addresses property speculators that buy land to sit on it for 10 years and do nothing with it. With LVT they have to either pay up, develop it, or sell it. All options good for the city.

> LVT addresses property speculators that buy land to sit on it for 10 years and do nothing with it. Didn’t Detroit raze the lots in the first place, since they considered an empty lot to be better than one with a decaying house? I really doubt many of these lots will ever actually be developed to any reasonable extent, since they aren’t exactly in nice areas. And likewise I bet there won’t be many people dying to bu…

Here's a good example of how empty those razed lots are

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3XA5JtEn9xmfk3g16

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#683

Post by flagrant_taco »

developer93 wrote: post #588
flagrant_taco wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh it's definitely not simple, I don't mean to input that. Your examples only really touch on one relevant example though, sewage. Sewage isn't really an issue in rural areas, off grid seltic systems process waste on site and more compelling systems can even compost human waste with very little effort. Modern central sewage system only exist because of dense cities, they weren't needed before that. High speed interne…

Your environmental footprint for transport is higher though right unless you're cycling everywhere, because you need to travel further? Which involves everything you need that you don't produce yourself. Or you're all entirely self sufficient and never leave your smallholdings? I don't mean to sound like a dick, just trying to engage :-)

There is a lot of room between being entirely self sufficient and minimizing impact. Simply "needing" less goes a very long way to reducing impact.

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#684

Post by orwell_bruh »

chongli wrote: post #584
leoedin wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is, for many people, the value of their land is kind of irrelevant. If you are using land by living on it, and want to live on it because it's near your friends, family, community, place of work etc, then the value of that land to someone else doesn't really matter. Maybe when you die and pass it to your kids, it would be great if it was valuable. But in the mean time (which for most people is man…

You can’t make everyone happy all the time. I’m a lot more okay with a situation in which a person is compelled to sell their very valuable property because they can’t afford the taxes than I am with people being unable to afford housing. If LVT helps to loosen up some undeveloped/underdeveloped land and get it into the hands of a willing developer then that is a big win for the fight against the housing crisis.

That's the kind of fine print that would kill any popular support for LVT.

It's also a false dichotomy. We don't need LVT to solve housing. We don't even know if LVT would solve housing. On the other hand, we know exactly how to solve housing. People just don't want to.

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#685

Post by rgblambda »

pmontra wrote: post #613
red_admiral wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land value tax is an idea by Henry George - the guy who coined the phrase "the rent is too damn high". His idea is among other things that a property tax discourages investment - one way to make money as an investor is to hold a plot of empty land in a desirable city centre location, watch it go up in value, and neither pay tax on any development on it nor bother with messy things such as tenants. Taxing the land val…

If you want to tax properties, why not taxing both the land and what is build upon it? And wardrobes, tables, books or computers (every year) but that's another story.

Wouldn't that effectively punish the owner for improving the property?

A tax purely on the land has the same justification as a windfall tax. The value goes up or down independently of any action of the owner. i.e. They didn't do anything to deserve the increase in their wealth. The value comes from what the land is surrounded by.

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#686

Post by krupan »

VirusNewbie wrote: post #518
krupan wrote: post #497

It's so weird to me that with our income tax laws we to try and make sure they are fair and taxing people according to their means. You make more income, you pay more taxes, you make less income, you pay less taxes. But then we layer on property/land taxes that absolutely do not follow that principle. Retired Grandma living off social security has land that she bought 50 years ago is now worth 50 times what it was? T…

There are already laws that are written referencing primary residence. It’s not hard to imagine exempting that and just making sure grandma only pays for her 8 vacation homes.

Why does she need to pay more taxes because she owns vacation homes? If they are generating income for her then income tax would make sure she's paying her fair share. Certainly whatever income she used to buy those homes was also taxed.

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#687

Post by krupan »

lliamander wrote: post #505
krupan wrote: post #497

It's so weird to me that with our income tax laws we to try and make sure they are fair and taxing people according to their means. You make more income, you pay more taxes, you make less income, you pay less taxes. But then we layer on property/land taxes that absolutely do not follow that principle. Retired Grandma living off social security has land that she bought 50 years ago is now worth 50 times what it was? T…

While I share your reservations, I do prefer this to imminent domain (a practice I am not a fan of). I think it's more likely for the seller to get the best value for their property, and incentivizes the seller to make good use of the property.

Are those the only two options?

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#688

Post by krupan »

avar wrote: post #523
lliamander wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I share your reservations, I do prefer this to imminent domain (a practice I am not a fan of). I think it's more likely for the seller to get the best value for their property, and incentivizes the seller to make good use of the property.

Is imminent domain when the government's in a real hurry to grab your land? :-)

Yes

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#689

Post by screye »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #101
t-writescode wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a way to convert single family homes into multiplexes as population rises so everyone can be closer to amenities. I’m very for that, especially if the former owner could find a guaranteed way to get one of the units on their land so they can stay.

I always thought this sounded like a good idea too (let the original owner stay, just in a new apartment-amongst-many) but (at least in the US) this doesn't seem reasonable. Besides any legal hiccups (how common are such contracts? Is this well-understood law or are we trailblazing this?) there's the practical concern that if I sell my place and it takes a year or two to build the housing complex, well, I still need…

These redevelopment plans are fairly common in Urban Asian countries.

Single family homes are redeveloped into 7-8 floor condos and 4-5plexes are frequently redeveloped into 12-15 floor condos. The residents are paid handsomely in rent for a few years and the new apartment is usually more luxurious and larger.

It's a win win

Re: Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value

#690

Post by flagrant_taco »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #480
flagrant_taco wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes that factor in existing improvements doesn't leave the owner as far behind chasing potential value that they are already being taxed for. When your tax burden is a factor of expected market value of the land plus permanent improvements they're taxing you on what you already have. When it's based on an expected optimal value of the lad they're taxing you on what *they* think your land *should* be worth…

Last two paragraphs first: You are making a logic error here. A human at a certain level of (whatever you want to call it, productivity, success, wealth, whatever) will want a certain lifestyle level and will use vastly more resources to achieve that lifestyle in a less dense city. You can see that comparing pretty much any set of cities in the world if you stratify by income and look at resource usage/co2 output/wha…

I'm honestly not sure if the logical error is on me there. If a majority of people honestly believe that humans are causing serious harm to the planet and still set a high bar for a certain level of lifestyle, environmental impact be damned, I think that's the error.

As far as shipping goes, it can definitely be comparably affordable to ship in products. Though you still have to factor in costs of everything from making and maintaining those vehicles, the oil and gas that moves them, and the costs on the area that actually produced the products.

My point isn't that everything should be magically fixed with more rural living or a perfect balance of density in cities. I'm simply trying to raise the other side to point out that things aren't simple or clean enough to actually run the math on whether dense cities are better or worse at reducing impact on the environment. There are simply too many factors and hidden costs along the way to calculate accurately.

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