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Tax the Land

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Re: Tax the Land

#261

Post by bombcar »

rapind wrote: post #79
boredumb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a new roof is over 20,000$ a new floor in a modest home is over 10,000$ a burst pipe will be over 1,000$ interest payments are thousands a year property taxes are thousands of dollars a year all are guarantees even with the lowest maintenance tenants.

Agreed. Home maintenance, property tax, mortgage interest, is a cost of owning regardless of whether you are renting or living in it. So that needs to always be part of your calculation, and I would hope most landlords are considering that. I was just hypothesizing that the "Bad Tenant tax" is potentially overblown. Sure it can be an absolute nightmare if you're unlucky (or bad at screening), but on average I suspect…

The problem with small landlords is they can't average bad tenants over a large number of units. They have one or two units, and even one just sitting empty for a few months destroys years of cash flow.

Let alone actually getting a bad tenant. It may be a low chance, but if it comes up, you can be hosed out of the entire value of the house (usually you can still sell the land, but in the absolute worst cases where the property was turned into a meth factory, you may be out more than the entire value).

Re: Tax the Land

#262

Post by pertymcpert »

anamax wrote: post #137
beebmam wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's quite likely that {place} is a good place to live because there aren't too many people who live there. Citation needed. Intuitively to me, it seems that {place} is a good (or bad) place to live because of a lot of reasons, not just one, as you suggest.

"because" was the wrong word as {place} isn't good just because there aren't too many people. ("not too many" is necessary, not sufficient.) However, "{place} won't be a good place to live if there are too many people there" is intuitively obvious. Consider Yosemite Valley. Do you really think that it would still be a good place if 1M people lived there? Okay - how about 100k? (There are easily 100k people who would…

Consider London.

Re: Tax the Land

#263

Post by chii »

inter_netuser wrote: post #218
CryptoPunk wrote: post #212

I've long advocated a land value tax. I would suggest that any reform of this nature, that eliminates private capture of economic rent, accompany one-time compensation to the parties that lose that economic rent, so in this case, compensation to make up for the loss in property value that a LVT would incur. The same should apply to any other repeal of rent-seeking institutions: anti-labor-competitive laws privileging…

I like Georgist taxes, but it's unclear that tax incidence will fall entirely on the rentier class. Important land is always unique, and therefore taxation would be have be incredibly dialed-in, no? A busy major international port would need to be taxed very differently than a sparsely attended beach just a mile away. This seems very difficult to get right. Have there been practical applications that show that's not…

> A busy major international port would need to be taxed very differently than a sparsely attended beach just a mile away. This seems very difficult to get right.

you could imagine that the taxation is tied to the value of the land, which can be calculated as the rent income, minus the value of improvements upon the land (such as any buildings, which can be estimated by the cost of construction and maintenance over the useful life time, which is already a figure that is needed for depreciation purposes).

This is the reason why LVT cannot be passed onto the renter, because if you increase the rent, you would pay more taxes as the value of the land must have increased if the renter accepts this higher rent without any changes to the building.

Re: Tax the Land

#264

Post by bombcar »

eric4smith wrote: post #163

Vox needs a spanking. (As always). Just imagine. I have some land. Lots of people would love to buy it it for different things. But for now, I just want to hang onto it until I'm ready to use it. And my house is sitting right next to it. Yeah, nimby blah, blah blah. But it's my house and my backyard and my land so... I have to be forced to sell it? Brah. Just another socialist redistribution scheme.

It's interesting to list out all the entities that would be immune to such an LVT and why.

Re: Tax the Land

#265

Post by chii »

pyradius wrote: post #80
bitshiftfaced wrote: post #26

In my mind, LVT only works properly when you've ripped out every other tax: income, sales, capital, you name it. Absolutely no more friction and warped incentives. Divide the government budget by the weighted land values and tax accordingly. But that could never work in our world. There would be too much temptation to add a small tax here for this other thing, and then it snowballs, and then we're back to where we st…

If you accept the ATCOR concept (All Taxes Come out of Rent) then the presence of existing taxes diminishes land rent by the amount of those taxes. You can read more on this subject in Taxation: The Lost History in the following section: All Taxes Indirectly Fall on Land Values - https://www.jstor.org/stable/43817496?read-now=1&refreqid=ex... and in the "Trickle-Up Economics" report - https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-co…

> In an ethical society, this privilege would not exist.

why not? paying for the use of privately owned property (land or car) seems like a natural and ethical transaction.

If ownership exists, this privilege also must exist.

Re: Tax the Land

#266

Post by greenonions »

lumost wrote: post #162
diebeforei485 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We already see standard property tax forcing the elderly out of their homes in many areas. It's reasonable to offer options to low-income retirees, for example allowing them to defer property tax payments until death. Texas does this, it works alright. Note that a single family dewlling on .75 acres likely costs the government a lot of money to provide services (plumbing, sewer, electric etc) and is likely already…

The claim that most American towns are going to go broke is a tricky one. The towns became dependent on federal grants raised via income taxes, the towns are not directly capable of raising income tax dollars today. It's possible that the suburban communities are financially viable with income based taxation policies rather than property tax based policies.

I think it's safe to assume that federal taxes aren't going anywhere. Likewise, I think it's very unlikely that suburban communities receive income taxing authority. Given those, I think the general prediction of American towns "going broke" in the sense of being unsustainable is true.

Re: Tax the Land

#267

Post by bsedlm »

I'm of the opinion that taxes are unnecessary in a state (meaning something closer to culture-civilization, i.e. taking "state" as far more than just government, at the least including private banks) were money is created by fiat and debt.

I think this because, as far as I'm able to understand, the fiat currency system is a kind of "infinite money machine" (or something like it) which makes a certain high-enough level of government free from requiring being funded by taxes.

this occurred to me after reading a bit about the book "how to pay for the war on terror". and I also recall reading how the USA government has been steadily de-funding the IRS, which would make no sense under the notion that taxes are necessary to fund the government.

Re: Tax the Land

#268

Post by Mave83 »

In Germany, the major problem is buerocracy. There are so many rules, that changing land use or getting better allowance simply takes centuries.

It's sometimes that absurde, that nearby lots have 3 times the building capacity.

We already have a land tax called "Grundsteuer", but it's useless in the way it is.

Re: Tax the Land

#269

Post by ralph84 »

bsedlm wrote: post #267

I'm of the opinion that taxes are unnecessary in a state (meaning something closer to culture-civilization, i.e. taking "state" as far more than just government, at the least including private banks) were money is created by fiat and debt. I think this because, as far as I'm able to understand, the fiat currency system is a kind of "infinite money machine" (or something like it) which makes a certain high-enough leve…

Taxes aren't about funding the government, they're about surveillance, control, and wealth redistribution.

Re: Tax the Land

#270

Post by chii »

nwah1 wrote: post #252
drewcoo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Landlords are not parasites and provide a valuable service. And tapeworms are attractively slimming!

The colloquial use of the term 'landlord' equivocates between the role of property manager and the role of titleholder. The latter is the only one that really deserves the feudal term. Property managers do indeed earn their living. They are often just contracted by titleholders. Because the titleholder is not obligated to do anything at all. Their role is to own, not to do. If the same person serves both roles then t…

if you're against title-holding, you are really against the idea of ownership, and capital.

> Because the titleholder is not obligated to do anything at all. Their role is to own, not to do.

their role is to provide capital to purchase the title. And in the future, some other capital holder will buy the title off you.

This whole process is what enables investment in the land in the first place. It's the same idea as shareholders buying shares off other shareholders. These "secondary" buyers don't directly contribute to the company (analogous to the land), but their role is necessary to distribute the risk of investment across time. High risk takers buy the IPO, and lower risk takers buy after the company has proven to be successful.

This isn't any different from land holding. High risk buyers would buy new land (offered by the crown/gov't), and perhaps develop it (or not, if they want to take on a loss since undeveloped land is money-losing). But once the land is proven valuable - e.g., the city is expanding into this new land now - the value grows, and they can sell to a different title holder who want more certainty of the value of the land.

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