Detroit wants to be the first big American city to tax land value • Hacker News Board

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

#781

Post by jonhohle » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #717

jonhohle wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tax incentives for land lords? We have more housing units per capita than any time in US history. Why do you think we need more?

Far fewer people are partnered, so that alone doesn't mean there is sufficient housing. Divorce/not marrying probably means we need 30% more bedrooms than previously required.

The average household size has not decreased significantly in the last 40 years (from 2.75 to 2.5), but units per capita has increased (currently around 0.425 units per person). We went from around 1.5% unit surplus to 6% unit surplus during that time.

You do bring up a good point, however. Nuclear families use housing much more efficiently than singles. For the good of the planet and others, perhaps people should consider the benefits of committed relationships.

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

#782

Post by enragedcacti » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

ses1984 wrote: post #524

josnyder wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, by design. One major goal is to prevent a landowner from squatting on an empty lot while their neighbors build prosperity around it. The "squatter" then cashes in, having done nothing themselves. "Everyone works but the empty lot" is the commonly used phrase. The goal of an LVT is to insulate a landowner's tax bill from being affected by their own improvements. Its anti-goal is to insulate a landowner from chang…

It’s just strange phrasing that improvements increase the value of adjacent land but not the land they’re on.

It increases the value of both equally

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

#783

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:37 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #638

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any school districts outside of Prop 13 California funded by primarily income or sales tax? But ya, you would need to do something like that if you were to tax land rather than improvements given schools, police, and lots of infrastructure needs scale up with improvements.

A significant part of the educational budget of the US comes from federal funds and federal funds are almost entirely income taxes (some other sources exist).

Most schools receive very little funding from the federal government. Maybe the poorest school districts this makes up a significant part of their funding, but for most school districts it doesn't.

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

#784

Post by bluGill » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:38 PM UTC

cultureswitch wrote: post #759

bluGill wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just empty land. The 'little old Lady' who lived happily in her small house for decades, while everything else developed bigger. At one time her house fit in, but now the rest of the block is bigger buildings worth a lot more. You decide if the above is good or bad.

Does little old lady own her house? If yes, what's the problem with taxing the increase in value of her property caused by the environment becoming more desirable? All in all she's neither losing nor gaining anything.

She probably doesn't have much money. She might, but she might only have social security which wouldn't provide enough to pay those taxes.

Edit: by money I mean income. She owns her house because years ago she (with her now dead husband) at one time had enough income to buy and pay off the house. Now that she is retired she has much less income despite having assets like a house that are in theory worth a lot of money that cannot be accessed.

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

#785

Post by veritas20 » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:38 PM UTC

in short, this is just squeezing the proverbial balloon...it moves the issue to a different area...over time, taxes have been high jacked and twisted into being used as incentives for influencing behaviors...the problem with that is that you need different behaviors at different times in development and there's an assumption that all parties will behave/think/execute in the same way given the same incentives...while more densely populated areas are more efficient and effective economically for some towns and municipalities, it's not necessarily the best use case for all scenario and all cases...at the end of the day, the goal for most municipalities is to cover the cost of goods and services (schools, infrastructure, fire & safety, parks & recreation, etc.)...if that's the goal, then we can quantify how much it costs per person/family/household to support these goods and services and that should serve as the baseline for the "tax"...your level of good and services should not depend on the market value of your land/property/house...in a recession or downturn with depressed property values, you still need the same level of goods and services if not more...

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

#786

Post by sagarm » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:38 PM UTC

flenserboy wrote: post #737

cycrutchfield wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are welcome to do so, but it would probably be cost prohibitive to do that in a highly desirable area. I’m not sure what the hangup is.

You are amazingly blasé about that fact that this would be using taxation to prevent people from using their own property as they see fit. This is utilitarianism run amok.

We prevent people from using their property as they see fit all the time via zoning. It is in fact mostly those with generational wealth that use this power.

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

#787

Post by cycrutchfield » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

flenserboy wrote: post #737

cycrutchfield wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are welcome to do so, but it would probably be cost prohibitive to do that in a highly desirable area. I’m not sure what the hangup is.

You are amazingly blasé about that fact that this would be using taxation to prevent people from using their own property as they see fit. This is utilitarianism run amok.

It’s a finite resource. 100 acres of land being barely used should certainly come with a cost. Of all of the things that could be taxed, this one actually makes the most sense.

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

#788

Post by simonh » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:44 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #739

simonh wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already tax revenue and/or profits in various ways anyway. If land is in a city, that gives it a high value and revenue earning potential due to no work or expenditure from the land owner, but ongoing costs to the taxpayer to provide the infrastructure and services that give it this value and potential. Roads, schools, hospitals, etc. these are very costly to the public but increase the value of nearby land. The l…

"but ongoing costs to the taxpayer to provide the infrastructure and services that give it this value and potential" Empty land isn't using any of those things. Any future improvement would use those things and be taxed accordingly. If you're concerned about infrastructure costs, the. You want to use a per capita tax or the current property tax that taxes the improvements (where people work or live) since they are us…

So we're paying for all those facilities, infrastructure and so on, and it's going to waste. That's inefficient. We want that land being used productively, contributing to the economy, making profits which pay taxes, to pay for these services.

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

#789

Post by invalidOrTaken » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:54 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #576

Kbelicius wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, if I am "child free" I will now oppose the building of schools and playgrounds on the basis that they make my LVT go up with no benefit to me. It would raise the value of your land.

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…

>I think the problem is, for many people, the value of their land is kind of irrelevant.

If only that were so! Then the American real estate market wouldn't have been artificially stacked in favor of homeowners for the last eighty years.

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

#790

Post by EA-3167 » Tue, Oct 17, 2023, 3:58 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #195

EA-3167 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a lot more romantic until you remember it's just going to the government, not some mystical starscape.

In theory a government that serves the people who elected it.

In practice does anyone buy that? I'm not a "government bad" person, I think it's necessary, if messy. I also think the problem with our government isn't that it has access to a lack of money.

Imagine this system was in place in 2000, you watch as trillions are flushed into a pair of 20 year wars. You watch as lax oversight leads to the crash in 2008. And you ask yourself if the piddling sums extracted from your property were well spent, and conclude that it probably wasn't.

If these taxes went into a single payer healthcare system, I'd be a lot more interested, but as just another step in gifting insurance companies another trillion... eh.