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Why a land-value tax is inevitable

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Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#131

Post by paconbork »

Spooky23 wrote: post #111
Ericson2314 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only happens because our terrible land use is inflating the real estate market + terrible policy like prop 13. In an LVT world, the value of land (overall-inflation-adjusted) should basically track the population, and virtually no one will own land they could no longer afford to buy.

That’s why LVT will never happen and is a dumb idea. If a freeway exit gets built a block away from my house, my taxes will reflect the value of a Walmart or whatever instead of my house.

In which case you should sell your property and make bank on what Walmart would be willing to pay for it. (If you wouldn't make bank then your taxes wouldn't be prohibitively high)

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#133

Post by throwaway201103 »

paconbork wrote: post #120
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of where LVT was tried at scale anywhere at all ever? I'm just describing the incentives. Identify the flaw in the logic.

>They abandon their properties, which have already declined in value, because the tax is more than the newly lowered cost of buying space in one of the tall buildings. If we hit the saturation point for tall apartment buildings, the land is less valuable (since you can't extract as much value from it), decreasing the land value taxes (and thus, incentive to leave homes). Lower land value taxes incentivize constructin…

It's one thing to sell because you have an unrealized 20x gain. It's another thing to be forced to sell because you can't afford the taxes.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#134

Post by Ericson2314 »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #101
paconbork wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charming bakery with five stories of apartments above it > charming bakery by itself

Bakery in a retail slot in the ground floor of a 5-story apartment building is by definition not charming. It's cookie-cutter (pardon the pun). It's the sort of place that opens, struggles for nine months, and goes bankrupt. We see so much about wanting "walkable" neighborhoods where we have shops and markets all steps away from our door. Well, if the land is so valuable that it will only support dense apartment towe…

77 Rue Galande, 75005 Paris, France

Tell me that's not charming as hell.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#135

Post by bryanlarsen »

chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #86
spenczar5 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon taxes don't seem simple, to me. Measuring the carbon cost of many things seems really hard. What's the carbon tax rate of income from a downtown parking lot? How do you even reason about that? (the others, sure, much simpler)

You don't need to measure the carbon cost of everything. You tax carbon at the source, like power generation and oil drilling. The costs will naturally balance upwards. The downtown parking lot, for example, probably doesn't have recurring carbon costs. The gasoline people use to drive there will be more expensive from the carbon tax on oil and gasoline production, and the cement or asphalt that takes electricity to…

That works for internal products, but not foreign ones. If you're importing from somewhere that also has a comparable carbon tax it's fine, but otherwise you have to apply the carbon tax to all imports.

Doing so also likely violates any free trade agreements you've signed.

It's a hard problem, but the gains are massive, so it's worth it.

It'll be a lot easier if a set of countries do this together.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#136

Post by maxerickson »

seanalltogether wrote: post #34
jvvlimme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You most certainly should be paying the equivalent of 10 households. You deny 9 others the ability to use the land. If you have real use for the land, paying the lvt won’t be an issue. If you can’t use it efficiently, an lvt will incentivise you to sell what you don’t use.

I disagree, if a town with 1000 households are interspersed with 100 farms, those 100 farms should not be paying an equal amount of money to the town finances as the 1000 households. It just doesn't make sense. They should certainly be paying for the right to have exclusive access to that land, but those 100 farmers do not put as much of a financial strain on the town budget as those 1000 households

Would that happen? 100 smallish farms can be a pretty big area, it would be atypical for 1000 additional residences to be mixed in (they would tend to concentrate).

Also, when I lived in a rural township there weren't any household services, the township did things like look after a couple of roads and zoning and had a little park. We had a well and septic and contracted with a private trash hauler.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#137

Post by throwaway201103 »

wmf wrote: post #112
throwaway201103 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against it is that a vacant property imposes very little cost upon society. It doesn't require fire protection, it doesnt add children to the education system, it doesn't use any municipal resources. If it's an eyesore or presents a hazard in some way, sure, but simply being vacant or "underutilized" doesn't do that. Why should it pay to simply exist?

It imposes the cost of pushing people farther away from each other. Every block that's empty is one block farther people have to walk/cycle/drive to get where they're going.

So you'd be in favor of plowing under Central Park and covering it with apartments towers so that everyone could be closer together?

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#138

Post by [deleted] »

mullingitover wrote: post #98
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are big huge businesses we aren't adequately taxing: Big tech. When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more. And Jeff Bezos does not need more money.

> When your sector makes up like three of the five most valuable companies on the planet, we probably should be taxing it more. Agreed. We should be ruthlessly taxing capital gains, and in general should look upon money earned without laboring for it with scorn.

[deleted]

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#139

Post by simonsarris »

mr_cyborg wrote: post #16

I’m struggling to envision how this would impact homeowners differently than the current property tax paradigm. If I have a house and the value of the property goes up, my property taxes increase. If I were to sell a house at market rate, theoretically it would be reflective of what rate it was being taxed at. How would this same situation play out with a land-value tax?

Places with high property taxes disincentivize beautiful building. The nicer you build, the more you pay yearly. LVT does not have this bad incentive problem.

Re: Why a land-value tax is inevitable

#140

Post by OldHand2018 »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #101
paconbork wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Charming bakery with five stories of apartments above it > charming bakery by itself

Bakery in a retail slot in the ground floor of a 5-story apartment building is by definition not charming. It's cookie-cutter (pardon the pun). It's the sort of place that opens, struggles for nine months, and goes bankrupt. We see so much about wanting "walkable" neighborhoods where we have shops and markets all steps away from our door. Well, if the land is so valuable that it will only support dense apartment towe…

The idea behind the LVT is that the tax is based on the best and highest use of the land. But zoning is a component.

If the market is begging for a 100-floor tower on a piece of land, but the zoning says you can only build a single house, the LVT would be based on a house sitting there.

So, if you had a historic or otherwise significant structure, you’re going to have to downzone the land to prevent the loss of the structure. Naturally, that’s going to be abused. Connected people are going to get their property zoned for smaller structures, while unconnected people will get their property zoned for huge structures.

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