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But this exists, today. You pay property taxes, everybody knows how it works and it does work. The net effect on land use would be to sort land use into ... ap
by ArkyBeagle 11y ago
But this exists, today. You pay property taxes, everybody knows how it works and it does work.
The net effect on land use would be to sort land use into ... appropriately priced bands of use. People would, IMO, be less likely to spend as much time and energy in tax avoidance.
The initial concept of the income tax was very loosely based on Georgist taxation - if someone has a high income, chances are it's based on rents. It's a noisy, distorted measurement and asking people their income, is, frankly, rude.
If a Georgist tax replaced an income tax, then those who produce without charging rents would have an advantage. The theory goes than income that is not rents is consumer surplus. And you stop taxing labor.
- fleitz 11y agoTax avoidance would actually be pretty easy, buy a house in places with low land value.
- larsiusprime 11y agonot really; low land value means there's less utility in building a home there. Build a house in the desert if you want, good luck selling it later. Georgism kills using houses as a store of value.
- fleitz 11y agoEven as a lowly developer I paid $60K in total taxes, it would easily pay for the extra truck maintenance from desert driving.
- larsiusprime 11y agoWhich is actually fine! 1: you'd still pay some tax, which would be in direct proportion to the amount of public goods your land consumed (henry george theorem) 2: the whole point is to shift the tax burden from labor (productive) to those who extract economic rent (drain on the economy)
- fleitz 11y agoRoughly the same amount of land is required by everyone, if the only source of revenue is land then everyone pays the same amount of tax regardless of income. Given that employees/retail customers would no longer have to pay income tax that same amount of money would be available for land lords to charge as increased rent or retailers in increased prices. I really fail to see how in a realistic scenario that this really changes anything at all. I would hazard a guess that this would likely be the most regressive tax code we've seen in modern history as large landowners would charge everyone roughly what they are being charged now plus what they customarily pay in income tax, and then likely distribute their own tax burden amongst the tenants. As a high income earner I whole heartedly support the idea that only land should be taxed, but I don't think it's going to play out like everyone thinks it will, given that land is not a particularly large store of wealth, 200 / 3000 trillion, or about 6% I think the only thing this tax code would do is encourage wealthy people to build very tall towers and farms in remote areas, and sell each other their property at dirt cheap prices. Vertical farming would also probably become a thing.
- ArkyBeagle 11y agoThat is the exact idea. People would occupy the cheapest land that can get away with. But for a given plot, there's no way to avoid those taxes. If you think of people who work as service personnel as subsidizing those who own land in SanFran or NYC with their labor, then I think this gets clearer. If the landowners rather than the laborers paid the taxes, it seems much more equitable.
- crdoconnor 11y agoYou can basically do that now if you like. Living like a hermit in a remote wilderness and paying no tax has always been possible. Still not popular.