I'm a huge proponent of land tax. Here's why I think it's worth considering:<p>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 tax burden onto land, we could potentially reduce the distortionary effects of other taxes and promote economic growth.<p>2. Wealth Inequality Reduction: Land ownership in the U.S. is highly concentrated. A significant portion of the country's land is owned by a small percentage of the population. An LVT would primarily affect these large landowners, redistributing wealth more evenly across society. Plus, land can't be hidden or moved offshore, making an LVT difficult to evade and an effective tool for wealth redistribution.<p>3. Sustainable Land Use: Many landowners hold onto vacant or underutilized land as a speculative investment, waiting for its value to increase. This leads to urban sprawl, inefficient land use, and higher housing costs. An LVT would make this kind of speculation less attractive, encouraging landowners to develop or sell their land. This could lead to more efficient land use, less urban sprawl, and potentially more affordable housing.
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:<p>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 develop their land and thereby give a substantial boost to local economic growth over a ten-year horizon.<p>And responses:
7% Strongly Agree, 46% Agreed, 17% Uncertain, 2% Disagree,2% No opinion, 24% Did Not Answer<p><a href="https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/land-value-tax/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/land-value-tax/</a>
(The link also shows the responses weighted by the responder's confidence, and the individual responses).
"George-pilled"?<p>UK-focused articles rebutting common arguments against a land value tax, written by an LVT advocate: <a href="http://kaalvtn.blogspot.com/p/index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://kaalvtn.blogspot.com/p/index.html</a>
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 year lease. What I find interesting is that there is little to no difference in price between the two. The market prices the 99 year lease the same as owning the land. Just an interesting tidbit about this in practice that I have always found counter-intuitive.
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.<p>By "good flexibility" I mean options to convert from perpetual ownership without screwing current owners -- our perpetual ownership model involves <i>extremely favorable</i> tax treatment at certain stages (capital gains forgiveness, like kind exchanges, cost basis step up) and you could make these benefits contingent on a conversion to a 99 year lease or something. I believe there is data that shows people have a stated preference for perpetual over 99 year, but they have a revealed preference that is neutral between the two, and this is how you could achieve the conversion without seizing land.<p>By "bad flexibility" I mean that LVT calculations seem easier to sabotage to blatantly favor the upper crust. If they can do it for income / capital gains tax, they can do it for LVT. Rolling leases, however, have a pretty transparent periodic price finding mechanism. Nothing is perfect, the treatment of improvements at renewal/auction time is a likely vector for skullduggery, but to my intuition it still seems better than LVT due to having more eyes and competing interests focused on the process.<p>Anyway, this is a "butterfly idea" where I haven't put enough thought into it to have a strongly informed opinion one way or the other and I want to know if someone knows of scholarly work on the subject.
I personally think people's first property should be tax-free. their actual home.<p>people own more than that The property should be taxed<p>also corporation-owned properties should be taxed<p>edit: i mean annual property taxes
I really like the idea of a Land Value Tax. However, the devil is in the details. How will it be calculated? Who will calculate it? How can they be held accountable?<p>It could so easily go badly though, and be worse than the existing system. The arguments in favor though, are very compelling.
The article is nuanced, while the title is eye-catching and uncharitable. If you react to the title without reading the article, you'll get the wrong idea.
Are there any areas that try and tax more directly based on services used (electric, water, fire, police, roads, etc.) rather than how large your property is or how fancy your house is? The idea of assessors trying to make judgements about the quality of a building seems a pretty silly way to pay for city services.
In the spirit of private property[1], no tax on primary residence (i.e., must actually live there most[2] of the time). No one should lose their only residence because they cannot afford to pay the tax.<p>1. which I only sorta agree with depending on the context<p>2. 75%? To be figured out by someone more informed than I, and not declarable.
The problem with this is that it's fundamentally incompatible with zoning.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
Related recent discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37908268">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37908268</a>
Especially contemporary Georgists seem to be fixated on land tax. In the 19th century a big focus on land kinda made sense because agriculture was such a huge part of the economy.<p>What's missed is the general idea. It's not land per se but any ownership that can be/is used for "rent seeking" (i.e. getting money without contributing any work). Nowadays things like intellectual property, natural resources and major infrastructure are the major things that should be taxed in this spirit.<p>Expanding this idea to that all means of production falls in the rent seeking category, one arrives at socialism.