4 ms·

My reading on this subject suggests that it's super hard to figure out the unimproved land value of improved land. That seems like it's an important hurdle.

bufordsharkley 11y ago
That's an objection that many have raised (Hayek thought it made LVT impractical), though there are schemes to make it better than the current system (county-run assessors, whose values often bear very little connection to reality)-- self-assessment of your land value being one.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Self assessment doesn't really solve anything, especially if it's for unimproved value (which is the tax basis in LVT), but all other important uses (including, e.g., eminent domain) use as-is, improved value. Self-assessment is arguably efficient for setting tax basis value for things with ad valorem taxes when it serves as a firm and irrevocable offer to sell at the price (e.g., if it were the firm, out upper limit, value for eminent domain purposes.) But when the value taxed if definitionally different from the price expected in any transaction, as it is worth unimproved land value taxes, self assessment is trivially fallbacks to the point of uselessness. In any case, I'm unconvinced that land value tax makes sense in a post-industrial economy; in an agricultural economy out industrial economy, sure, I can see the attraction.
mjevans 11y ago
I would expect that value to be highly speculative. It's like trying to ask the value of a stock/bond. A better way of aligning the tax code would probably be to have a low tax for uses which fulfill the desired criteria of the space, and a high tax (penalty tax) for deviating from that desired use. For high concentration of population urban centers (city cores) I would like to see something closer to caves of steel, where pedestrian levels share a given geographic elevation, and are setup like indoor parks/greenhouses. Building such a feature in to a building should lower the tax rate (as long as the building maintains the park along it).
- nwah1 11y ago
  When taxable income is recorded for income taxes, does that bear much resemblance to reality? Do people really pay sales tax on everything they buy online? And if we could make that happen, is that the kind of internet we'd want? Land taxes are great because they tax something right out in the open that everyone can see. You might not have a perfect idea of the value, but you can get a pretty good idea by looking at surrounding parcels. Self-assessment, as noted below, is one feasible system out of many. LVT can be avoided by not owning land, but all users of land will need to pay, and they cannot avoid it. But in effect they're simply renting from the government rather than a private landlord. The market rent doesn't change. Under-assessment can open up the possibility of subleasing, however, just like when normal landlords fail to charge the full rent for whatever reason.

bufordsharkley 11y ago

That's an objection that many have raised (Hayek thought it made LVT impractical), though there are schemes to make it better than the current system (county-run assessors, whose values often bear very little connection to reality)-- self-assessment of your land value being one.

dragonwriter 11y ago
Self assessment doesn't really solve anything, especially if it's for unimproved value (which is the tax basis in LVT), but all other important uses (including, e.g., eminent domain) use as-is, improved value. Self-assessment is arguably efficient for setting tax basis value for things with ad valorem taxes when it serves as a firm and irrevocable offer to sell at the price (e.g., if it were the firm, out upper limit, value for eminent domain purposes.) But when the value taxed if definitionally different from the price expected in any transaction, as it is worth unimproved land value taxes, self assessment is trivially fallbacks to the point of uselessness. In any case, I'm unconvinced that land value tax makes sense in a post-industrial economy; in an agricultural economy out industrial economy, sure, I can see the attraction.

mjevans 11y ago

I would expect that value to be highly speculative. It's like trying to ask the value of a stock/bond. A better way of aligning the tax code would probably be to have a low tax for uses which fulfill the desired criteria of the space, and a high tax (penalty tax) for deviating from that desired use. For high concentration of population urban centers (city cores) I would like to see something closer to caves of steel, where pedestrian levels share a given geographic elevation, and are setup like indoor parks/greenhouses. Building such a feature in to a building should lower the tax rate (as long as the building maintains the park along it).

nwah1 11y ago
When taxable income is recorded for income taxes, does that bear much resemblance to reality? Do people really pay sales tax on everything they buy online? And if we could make that happen, is that the kind of internet we'd want? Land taxes are great because they tax something right out in the open that everyone can see. You might not have a perfect idea of the value, but you can get a pretty good idea by looking at surrounding parcels. Self-assessment, as noted below, is one feasible system out of many. LVT can be avoided by not owning land, but all users of land will need to pay, and they cannot avoid it. But in effect they're simply renting from the government rather than a private landlord. The market rent doesn't change. Under-assessment can open up the possibility of subleasing, however, just like when normal landlords fail to charge the full rent for whatever reason.