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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

#71

Post by ruste »

The problem with this is that it's fundamentally incompatible with zoning.

I own a chunk of acreage in farmland adjacent to my metropolitan area. The township won't allow it to be developed further due to density restrictions, I have my one house on it but that's all I get and I'm happy with that, but his tax would be implemented at the state level. The state would say "You have a lot of valuable land here right next to the city. We're going to tax you wildly on land you can't develop.

Furthermore, this tax would just serve to increase speculative churn and encourage chunks of land that would eventually go on to become parks and public lands to be broken down by landowners into small chunks for the densest and most valuable uses.

The whole problem is that what is valuable is not necessarily what is good for society and this does nothing to address that. I'm always struck by how weirdly free-market / Laissez faire land value taxes are given who typically pushes them.

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

#72

Post by triceratops »

throw0101a wrote: post #67
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 pr…

I think GP was talking about property taxes. Even the US has tax free capital gains up to a limit.

No capital gains isn't necessarily a great system either. It leads to people treating their primary home as a retirement savings vehicle.

Taxing inflation-adjusted capital gains on home sales is a sensible compromise. And maybe also allowing the gain to be divided over years of ownership.

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

#73

Post by dfxm12 »

rindalir wrote: post #13
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 you own a farm in a city or area with high housing demand, yes, I think it would. (edit: and I'm not meaning this to be a sarcastic response -- there are urban farms).

What makes you think this is unfair specifically to an urban farm? What about an LVT treats this urban farm differently from a parking lot or totally undeveloped lot?

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

#74

Post by PopAlongKid »

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.

You get an income tax deduction for real property taxes paid on all the property you own, whether for business or personal use. (Although there is a temporary cap on the total amount of state and local taxes on personal-use property one can deduct on their federal tax return, along with a workaround for wealthy business owners, the so-called pass-through entity elective tax that many states have enacted.)

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

#75

Post by papercrane »

dsr_ wrote: post #37
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…

A new 99 year lease is probably about the same value as buying the land. Does a new tenant always get a new 99 year lease, or is it the remainder of the previous lease? I would not consider a lease expiring next year, for example, to be of equivalent value.

The leases are transferable and renewable. Other than the odd legal arrangement it's functionally not that different than owning land and paying property tax on it.

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

#76

Post by artimaeis »

robertlagrant wrote: post #69
sokoloff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I think that's the jib though - in a lot of countries you don't really "own" the land. You and the government(s) get to just agree that it's your responsibility for a while.

LVT cleans up this incentive some by putting taxes in place in areas where the land is more valuable. I think Georgists would argue for doing that _and_ removing property taxes, specifically so you aren't taxed for the things you own.

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

#77

Post by 13of40 »

dsr_ wrote: post #37
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…

A new 99 year lease is probably about the same value as buying the land. Does a new tenant always get a new 99 year lease, or is it the remainder of the previous lease? I would not consider a lease expiring next year, for example, to be of equivalent value.

My family has a "99 year lease" on a property from the federal government in the US, and even though it's called that, it really just renews something like every 20 years. Not sure if in the UK they literally count 99 years. (Edit: To be clear, it's been in the family since the 1930s, so it's gone through several renewals already.)

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

#78

Post by Lacerda69 »

tokai wrote: post #20
tom_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point, yes - if I'm surprised to see this turn of phrase in the NYT, and yet I implicitly assume everybody knows what it means, then maybe I shouldn't have been surprised in the first place.

Yeah definitely weird seeing racist slang from 4chan seep into mainstream journalism. inb4 its from the Matrix; only red/blue pill is. The [term]pilled is from /pol/.

I see what you mean, but in a lot of ways many mainstream memes have had their origin on 4chan (not only pol/b btw) and memes influence speech and everything else. Would be interesting to see a detailed analysis of this IMO

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

#79

Post by zozbot234 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #33
303uru wrote: post #10

I'm a huge proponent of land tax. Here's why I think it's worth considering: 1. Economic Efficiency: Unlike income or consumption taxes, an LVT is non-distortionary. It doesn't discourage productive activities like work, saving, or investment. Land is a fixed resource; its supply doesn't change with price or tax fluctuations. Therefore, an LVT wouldn't distort market incentives, unlike other taxes. By shifting the ta…

Re non-distorionary: It distorts along a completely new axis - whether or not economic activity uses land. It's unclear (at least to me) why Google, say, whose business activity is very non-land-intensive, should be in a favorable tax position compared to, say, farming. You say "because the farmers use more land!" And it's true; they do. But if you don't already believe that land should be the determinant of tax, tha…

> It distorts along a completely new axis - whether or not economic activity uses land.

It actually doesn't, because if you hold unused land it's already fully rational for you to sell or lease it, so that some other activity can take place on it instead - any land that's taxed by LVT must by definition have some economic value. LVT may discourage pointless speculation in land values, but that's a benefit and far from a 'distortion'.

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

#80

Post by willcipriano »

nwah1 wrote: post #25
303uru wrote: post #10

I'm a huge proponent of land tax. Here's why I think it's worth considering: 1. Economic Efficiency: Unlike income or consumption taxes, an LVT is non-distortionary. It doesn't discourage productive activities like work, saving, or investment. Land is a fixed resource; its supply doesn't change with price or tax fluctuations. Therefore, an LVT wouldn't distort market incentives, unlike other taxes. By shifting the ta…

To me the key issue is the Law of Rent. It helps explain issues like Elizabeth Warren's Two-Income Trap. Why does technological progress not seem to result in overall increasing leisure and standard of living? That is why Henry George titled his book "Progress and Poverty". He was explaining that paradox using the law of rent developed by Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and proposing their solution with a megaphone.

> Why does progress not result in increasing leisure and standard of living in many important ways?

It did. Domestic labor went from walking down to the creek and using a wash tub to throwing it into a washing machine, coal fired stoves were replaced with gas and electric, garments made by hand are now made an ocean away, television and the internet made homes more fun to be in and gave a break to parents minding children, beating the rugs was replaced with a vacuum, the freezer and microwave made quick meals trivial to prepare..

And then, suddenly and totally organically, with no help from a media that is owned by a few large corporations that would benefit from doubling the workforce, it was decided that working in the home is slavery, now two incomes chase the same home that costs now twice as much and the population pyramid is inverting beacuse nobody had kids.

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