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Tax the Land

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Re: Tax the Land

#371

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

tome wrote: post #355
2Gkashmiri wrote: post #18

in india,it has been a tradition of "you sold a piece of land and this happens: you get capital gains and there is not a lot of exemptions (another house, agri land) so you pay your taxes at indexed cost of acquisition. the "price" set between buyer and seller at the time of registration is added 5-7% "stamp duty". so $ 1 mil + 5 % to govt= paid by buyer. this is true for all subsequent sales so when the next buyer w…

> what more do you want them to impose? The point of land value tax is to remove all those other taxes (at least, I wouldn't support introduction unless it did).

would that result in less collection of taxes or more? because current implementation of cascading effect means more and more taxes are incurred, which while increases the price of property, gives taxes to government which is just that

Re: Tax the Land

#372

Post by midasuni »

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…

> work hard, retire, get forced off your land via tax.

That’s not how it works. The more you get paid, the more you can pay land owners.

When demand is higher than supply prices rise to capture all excess income.

Re: Tax the Land

#373

Post by beambot »

gameman144 wrote: post #366

I totally get the appeal of land taxes and restriction of land-use regulation at the local level, and by and large they seem like a reasonable approach to poor resource allocation and unequal ownership opportunities. One thing I've not seen addressed, though, is the apparent disincentive to improve communities in meaningful ways. For instance, say I live in a very expensive city and I can no longer afford the land ta…

How is this concern not equally-relevant in the current status quo?

At least for our locale: property taxes are still based on assessed value, sales tax is collected on purchases, and income tax & business permits still apply. All of these get more expensive if the community improves...

Re: Tax the Land

#374

Post by [deleted] »

closeparen wrote: post #305
ricree wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 dr…

People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. They are pretty successfully standing athwart capitalism’s most powerful firms, going toe to toe with people who have hundreds of billions of dollars on the line (in terms of Silicon Valley’s capacity grow and add headcount, not just the re…

[deleted]

Re: Tax the Land

#375

Post by mdmglr »

closeparen wrote: post #305
ricree wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 dr…

People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived. They are pretty successfully standing athwart capitalism’s most powerful firms, going toe to toe with people who have hundreds of billions of dollars on the line (in terms of Silicon Valley’s capacity grow and add headcount, not just the re…

> People who own single family homes at the kinds of locations where developers are eager to build apartment buildings are among the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived.

If you imply "all" then I simply need to find one counter example to prove your statement wrong. I know people who have sold their homes in the middle of a city to make way for high density housing and they are not "the wealthiest and most powerful ever to have lived".

The end game of these LVT policies is that we will all be living in apartments and paying rent in perpetuity. When we die our kids will take on the burden of that rent. This is how it works in Switzerland today. All apartment buildings are owned by private investment firms. A key feature of the USA is the ability to build generational wealth through land ownership.

Re: Tax the Land

#376

Post by chii »

tome wrote: post #348
chii wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> if you're against title-holding, you are really against the idea of ownership, and capital. Is anyone in this discussion against title-holding per se? Not that I can see. The point is that title-holding should come with some responsibilities, specifically to pay a tax proportional to the value of the title. For comparison, someone is not necessarily against work because they believes that earning income comes with…

> pay a tax proportional to the value of the title.

Would you also agree then, that holding onto shares of a company would also require you to pay a proportion of the value of those shares in tax? In other words, this is a wealth tax?

Re: Tax the Land

#377

Post by ScottBurson »

gameman144 wrote: post #366

I totally get the appeal of land taxes and restriction of land-use regulation at the local level, and by and large they seem like a reasonable approach to poor resource allocation and unequal ownership opportunities. One thing I've not seen addressed, though, is the apparent disincentive to improve communities in meaningful ways. For instance, say I live in a very expensive city and I can no longer afford the land ta…

If you buy property in the second city, then as values rise, yes your taxes will go up but so will the value of your property. Worst case, you have to take out a home equity loan to pay the taxes, but you'll probably still come out ahead.

I've long advocated for an arrangement whereby if the value of a property increases by more than some small amount, say 2%, the excess wouldn't come due until the property was sold; the locality would hold a lien on the balance. This, IMO, is how Prop. 13 should have worked -- seniors on fixed incomes facing rising property values aren't really poor; they just have a cash flow problem, which could and should have been solved without taking money from the localities. Anyway, such a provision would make it unnecessary, in many cases, to take out a home equity loan to pay an LVT.

Of course, renters wouldn't benefit directly from property value gains, but as an LVT would incentivize construction, it would help bring rents down.

Re: Tax the Land

#378

Post by belorn »

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 am rather skeptic of land value taxes, but I would like to hear your view of why land value tax is better than simply raising the tax on rent and property sales. The main argument that I see against land value taxes is that land doesn't generate any income by itself, which forces people to pay money in situation where they might not have any income to do so.

One could bypass this problem by putting in limitations, like an requirement to be high-income before the tax is applicable. One could also limit land tax to specific zones outside of low density residential areas so it doesn't go into effect when the land owner and the person living there is the same person.

Re: Tax the Land

#379

Post by ScottBurson »

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…

Cities that are getting bigger are presumably doing so because their economies are expanding. While I can guess why you don't like growth, you may be overlooking that your own economic opportunities are also improving.

Be that as it may, I think it's a problem with our system that homeowners are given such a strong incentive to keep housing scarce.

Re: Tax the Land

#380

Post by vladvasiliu »

ScottBurson wrote: post #377
gameman144 wrote: post #366

I totally get the appeal of land taxes and restriction of land-use regulation at the local level, and by and large they seem like a reasonable approach to poor resource allocation and unequal ownership opportunities. One thing I've not seen addressed, though, is the apparent disincentive to improve communities in meaningful ways. For instance, say I live in a very expensive city and I can no longer afford the land ta…

If you buy property in the second city, then as values rise, yes your taxes will go up but so will the value of your property. Worst case, you have to take out a home equity loan to pay the taxes, but you'll probably still come out ahead. I've long advocated for an arrangement whereby if the value of a property increases by more than some small amount, say 2%, the excess wouldn't come due until the property was sold;…

> If you buy property in the second city, then as values rise, yes your taxes will go up but so will the value of your property. Worst case, you have to take out a home equity loan to pay the taxes, but you'll probably still come out ahead.

Wouldn't this rise in your property's value only matter when you sell?

Home equity loans aren't a thing in France as far as I know, so maybe I'm completely off here, but wouldn't you need to pay back that loan anyway? So if you're intending to sell the property (which I assume is the case, since OP's main complaint was being forced to move), how do you come out ahead?

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