3 ms·
The version of that that I recall was from Heinlein's Number of the Beast. The detail he added in his version was that you could reassess your property at any t
by wcunning 7y ago
The version of that that I recall was from Heinlein's Number of the Beast. The detail he added in his version was that you could reassess your property at any time, but you had to pay 5 years of back taxes at the new value immediately. This means you can sit at a low value until someone comes along to buy you out, but you have to have the money set aside to avoid immediate purchase.
- dTal 7y agoThis seems like an improvement - part of the what makes capitalism useful is information propagation. You don't know what the the true value of the land is until someone comes to buy you out (and even then, you don't really know - it's just a hint). But it perverts the process of sale negotiation in bizarre ways, coupled to the arbitrary 5 year requirement, which has great impact on the economics of it. Consider - if someone really wants to buy your land, and the only way you can say no is by re-valuing higher than their offer (with a big payout to the government), then a large player could force someone out of business with unreasonably high offers - and then pick up their land on the cheap from the liquidators. Every offer/counter-offer would have to backed by a contract to actually make the sale if the other party agrees, with the back taxes only paid when the sale is made. But then what happens when someone plain doesn't want to sell?