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The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

nytimes.com

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Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#61

Post by nwah1 »

gcapu wrote: post #44
strangesmells06 wrote: post #22

I personally think people's first property should be tax-free. their actual home. people own more than that The property should be taxed also corporation-owned properties should be taxed edit: i mean annual property taxes

We already have that. You get a big deduction for one of your houses if you live in it.

The mortgage interest tax deduction is one of the least popular policies among economists because it fails in its objectives. It made homes less affordable and raises prices, and enriches banks, without helping new homeowners.

The concept of imputed income also helps homeowners. If you own a house that you rent out to people, the money you get is counted as income. If you are an owner-occupier and paid off your mortgage, then you effectively pay rent to yourself... money that you otherwise would've needed to pay to others, but don't need to pay tax on it.

So essentially you get a deduction even besides the mortgage interest deduction. All of this is also factored into home values, and thus the purchase decision for new buyers won't ever be dramatically better than renting.

The solution of a land value tax is necessary. It is most necessary in the residential space, including for first homes, because that is the most important place where we need to ensure high and quality supply, and affordability.

Helping homeowners, specifically, but not others is arbitrary and unfair.

Providing a citizen's dividend out of the revenue of a land value tax, to help all, would be fair, and would help enable people to acquire homes if they want them.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#62

Post by ulrashida »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #28
26fingies wrote: post #11

Why does this author insist on calling all of these people who think LVT is a good idea Georgists? It’s kind of an annoying angle for the article.

Because land value taxation is one of the cornerstones of Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

That's true, but you can support a land tax without the other tenets of Georgism. It's unusually reductive.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#63

Post by waltbosz »

aketchum wrote: post #14

I grew up in Fairhope, Alabama which was established as a single tax colony inspired by the theories of Henry George. One of the most interesting things to me is that on the bay, you can have two houses next to each other, both for sale and both equivalent in terms of house quality. One house happens to be on colony land and the other is not, so when you buy one house you own the land, but the other you get the 99 ye…

Question about Fairhope:

I spend a lot of time in Arden, Delaware which is also a single tax community. Many of the people of Arden love the town and Georgism. So much so that there seems to be several people from Arden that were named either Arden or George.

Does the same naming thing happen in Fairhope?

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#64

Post by orwin »

jjoonathan wrote: post #48

Has someone written up a comparison of LVT vs Rolling Leases (i.e. perpetual land ownership is replaced by 30-40 year leases)? Rolling leases just seem to have more good flexibility and less bad flexibility. By "good flexibility" I mean options to convert from perpetual ownership without screwing current owners -- our perpetual ownership model involves extremely favorable tax treatment at certain stages (capital gain…

Rolling leases seems to be superior, and more logical than a land tax. You'll have to be able to factor in lease reduction (for primary homes, non-market housing, farming and strategic industry), but it seems easier to set up.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#65

Post by dsr_ »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #27
InitialLastName wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that the nuance to that question would be the interpretation of "unfairly", no? If you are sitting on land that is more valuable than the use you put it to, maybe you should have an incentive to put it to more valuable use?

What is a more valuable use than feeding people? Farmers are already incentivized to abuse their land with monocropping and industrialization in order to stay afloat even with the subsidies they already have. A land value tax would make things even worse and would probably result in outsourcing all food production to other countries.

Out in Nebraska, there's very little demand for land for building houses, and the land is not bad for growing corn, soy, wheat and cattle.

Land right next to Lincoln is likely to be valued like other residential and industrial spaces; land out in McPherson County is likely to continue to be valued like other farmland.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#66

Post by PopAlongKid »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #38
PopAlongKid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you remove the first five words of your reply and still make a valid point?

Maybe. But maybe California's government has given more reason than other governments to think that they would treat this as an additional form of income, rather than a replacement.

That's an interesting claim that calls out for more evidence. Just a year ago, when CA had a large budget surplus, it refunded billions of dollars to many of its taxpaying residents in the form of inflation relief payments. That doesn't seem like the behavior of a government that only wants to collect more and more tax.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#67

Post by throw0101a »

strangesmells06 wrote: post #22

I personally think people's first property should be tax-free. their actual home. people own more than that The property should be taxed also corporation-owned properties should be taxed edit: i mean annual property taxes

> I personally think people's first property should be tax-free. their actual home.

This is how it works in Canada: principle residence has no capital gains on sale.

If you move to a new place, and don't sell the old one, then you have to change its status and the clock starts ticking on any price appreciation after the status change. Further if you rent out part of the structure (e.g., basement), then you have to pro-rate a status change of the property (generally proportional to surface area) and declare rental income.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#68

Post by shermantanktop »

belligeront wrote: post #39

Relatedly, University of Chicago has a popular survey where they ask Economists their views on policy proposals (along with their confidence in their answers), and their most recent survey was on LVT: The question: > Shifting the burden of municipal property taxes towards land and away from improvements such as buildings - as proposed in the Detroit land value tax plan - will enhance the incentives for owners to deve…

One economist will give you an answer which may or may not be correct. A poll of economists sounds like a good source for /dev/random.

In a field which has notable problems with predicting the future, adding more samples may not improve matters.

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#69

Post by robertlagrant »

sokoloff wrote: post #43
robertlagrant wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it'd still be taxed.

It's taxed now as well (in almost all jurisdictions). It's just also taxed on any buildings that sit on top of it (that latter portion of which provides a disincentive to development).

Understood, although not much of a disincentive. I think I have an aversion to just taxing what people own. When it's a building, at least that is related to services they're likely to consume; it's not just "we want a cut".

Re: The 'Georgists' Are Out and they want to tax your land

#70

Post by dfxm12 »

dukeyukey wrote: post #24
JTbane wrote: post #6

Dumb question about land value tax- does it unfairly penalize people who own large tracts of land like farmers and loggers?

If the land is only really useful for farming or logging, then no. You'll still get taxed on it, but because the land is relatively low-value it won't be much. Now, if you're a farmer on the edge of Austin, and the city's growth means your land is getting increasingly valuable due to high housing demand, then your tax will go up, potentially until you're forced to give up farming and sell to developers. That's intent…

I think it's worth pointing out that if there's an LVT, whether you own a farm, a parking lot or an empty lot on the edge of Austin, your taxes would go up in any case. There's nothing inherent in an LVT that unfairly penalizes farms.
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