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Tax the Land

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Re: Tax the Land

#271

Post by formerkrogemp »

chii wrote: post #253
wan23 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is a place where there should be more homes if you were looking at it from a regional perspective, it is in the interest of the people who live there to block those new homes from being built to limit supply of the asset they own. The people who would vote in favor of the new homes don't actually get to vote, since they don't live there yet.

> a place where there should be more homes if you were looking at it from a regional perspective aka, somebody else deciding that there should be more homes. I think that's the wrong perspective to take. I don't want an authority to decide this - the locals should make their own choices (right or wrong).

Wrong choices are still wrong. I'd like to move into a house with my wife, but at this rate we'll be saving for a decade to get there. With climate change we have no idea how the real estate market will be at 1.5 degrees warming.

Re: Tax the Land

#272

Post by [deleted] »

ralph84 wrote: post #269
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.

[deleted]

Re: Tax the Land

#273

Post by chii »

danaris wrote: post #45
trgn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> providing no service Landlords are not parasites and provide a valuable service. I think a land tax would be great to curb speculation. Buying property, not providing any service (neither by renting nor capital investment in improvements), and just pocketing the appreciation, I agree, that's parasitic on the community. FWIW - I don't think a landtax would create a meaningful tilt towards more affordable home owners…

> Landlords are not parasites and provide a valuable service. Landlords take property that could be owned outright by the resident and extract, at best, a middleman's fee. Some landlords also provide access to services such as repair, cleaning, etc and combine those fees with the rent, but there is no reason those could not be equally available to owner-residents without the landlord acting as a middleman, and there…

> property that could be owned outright by the resident

So why don't the residents do it? Ownership requires capital, which presumably the residents don't have access to.

So the landlord is providing the capital required for the building's initial investment, just shifted across time. They don't necessarily have to be there at the inception of the building's initial investment phase, but they are party to the entire chain of transaction, and is necessary for the initial owner's exit out of this investment.

If the landlord would not buy at _this_ price, the initial owner of the land/building may not have had the risk appetite to build the building in the first place.

Re: Tax the Land

#274

Post by cascom »

bombcar wrote: post #240
s1artibartfast wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree, But I do think the idea that the government, not individuals, is the ultimate owner of the land is a fundamental assumption of LVT. Not all people believe this.

Nevada for a short time had the option of getting allodial title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title#Nevada Proper use of allodial title and homeowner's exemptions could go a long way.

I had never heard of this, super interesting, thanks.

Re: Tax the Land

#275

Post by chii »

andrepd wrote: post #64
danaris wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Landlords are not parasites and provide a valuable service. Landlords take property that could be owned outright by the resident and extract, at best, a middleman's fee. Some landlords also provide access to services such as repair, cleaning, etc and combine those fees with the rent, but there is no reason those could not be equally available to owner-residents without the landlord acting as a middleman, and there…

Exactly. To put it simply, rent charged = services sendered + economic rent. This is trivially evidenced by the fact that the landlord can outsource every service he "provides" and still turn up a profit; this amount is the economic rent on capital.

> can outsource every service he "provides" and still turn up a profit

the outsourcing might increase efficiency of provision of the services due to economies of scale.

This efficiency gain is then reflected as the profit.

Re: Tax the Land

#276

Post by chii »

azth wrote: post #128
andrepd wrote: post #7

There is something deeply wrong with the fact that you can buy-to-rent a property and immediately turn up a profit, essentially inserting yourself as a parasitic middleman in the process, providing no service, and extracting an economic rent.

As someone else mentioned, landlords provide a valuable service to the economy. They take on the risk of property ownership and maintenance etc. Now, if we look at why the three major religions prohibited money lending with interest, we can see where the true parasitic middlemen are: the money lenders.

i would not take religious prohibitions as any moral high ground. They also prohibit homosexual relationships.

Money lending is as natural as money spending. It allows future improvements to be funded, and is critical to development of a society.

Re: Tax the Land

#277

Post by kudu »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #183
long_time_gone wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you pocket 500 per month, you are looking at around 35 years to break even on a $200k down payment. Not sure your definition of break even. After 30 years, I will have paid off the entire house.

Key word down payment. You put 200k down on the rental and get 200k in rent. You pay 1.6 million on a 800k loan and own the house at the end. Without appreciation, you are 600k in the hole

I don't understand where the 1.6 million came from. If you're talking about interest on the loan, the premise was that the rent covers the mortgage payment (interest and capital) plus maintenance plus returns some net cash. In that case, when the net cash has returned enough to cover the downpayment, you'd be richer by the entire value of the house even without appreciation.

Re: Tax the Land

#278

Post by ricree »

giantg2 wrote: post #90
aperson_hello wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society. This policy only makes sense where zoning is also loosened enough to actually build on the land though...if zoning doesn't allow you to do anything with the land to make more money (building apartments, subdividing, etc.), this just becomes a tax on poor landowners.

"Getting that 0.75 acres to turn over is exactly the point. Incentivizing them to leave (or better yet: subdivide and sell the land) is good for society." I doubt the affected person feels it's good. Quite frankly, the land value tax ideas seem absurd to me. It's just another redistribution scheme - work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax. It seems it's the government's and everyone else's desire to just…

>It's just another redistribution scheme

More starkly, it seems to me that it's a redistribution scheme that exists primarily to enrich those who already have abundant capital. Who's going to be building and owning those high density structures afterwards? Not the people who are getting displaced from their homes, I suspect.

In short, it feels as though we're being told that it is right and just that you should be driven from your own home, so long as there exists some millionaire who would like to tear it down and build an apartment building in its place.

Re: Tax the Land

#279

Post by chii »

SnowHill9902 wrote: post #187
bluquark wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the key arguments in favor of enforcing private property rights when this idea was taking shape during the Enlightenment is that they are a powerful incentive to develop. So an additional incentive to either generate revenue from the land, or sell to someone who is willing to, is very much in the spirit of modern property rights.

Developed land does not have to bring revenue (or even profit). May I not have just an illiquid house on a plot of land and no other assets?

> I not have just an illiquid house

if you live in it, then a land value tax is equivalent to the state charging you a tax on the imputed rent you receive from owning your own abode.

If you don't live in it, but rent it out, then that's self explanatory - you use the rental income to pay the tax.

If you don't rent it out, then it's your loss as you have to pay the tax out of pocket. This means you will need to rent it out.

Re: Tax the Land

#280

Post by noelsusman »

causality0 wrote: post #204

Local governments, which have been granted near unchecked authority by state governments, are entirely captured by homeowners. I'm not fully clear on this statement. Is it putting forth that local governments shouldn't be controlled by the people who are local, or is it saying that homeowners hold more power than renters? If the former, that's just silly. If the latter, renters get the same one vote per person as eve…

You may vote purely in your self interest, but not everyone does. That's a choice you make.
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