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So, because land value assessments are easier than property assessments, we should get a smaller margin of error by switching to a LVT. This is good. Your othe

by rcpt 7y ago

So, because land value assessments are easier than property assessments, we should get a smaller margin of error by switching to a LVT. This is good. Your other point seems to be that no margin of error is acceptable and we should therefore ditch the whole thing. It's not clear that the societal pain from somewhat inaccurate tax assessments is great enough that we should just set everything to 0. We have lots of data that 0 property tax leads to housing shortages and rampant speculation (cf. Malta for an example) and if you don't tax land ownership you often end up taxing something productive, like income.

simplecomplex 7y ago
Margin of error? I don’t think you understand me. There can’t be a margin of error because there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything). Margin of error compared to what? People attribute different values to the same property, which is not reflected in any sort of assessed value. I’ll explain with a question: If I say a property is worth $30k and you say it’s worth $100k what should the assessed value be?
- rcpt 7y ago
  > there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything) There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". I'm not very familiar with finance so I'm not sure if this is what you you're getting at. But your idea, that land can't be taxed because it has no value, can't possibly be new as these questions have been around for literally hundreds of years. That being said, I've never heard it before and would be genuinely interested if you can link some papers or books.
  - simplecomplex 7y ago
    > There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". If there is, then how would I calculate the intrinsic value of a piece of real estate, to levy a tax on it? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

by rcpt 7y ago

simplecomplex 7y ago

Margin of error? I don’t think you understand me. There can’t be a margin of error because there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything). Margin of error compared to what? People attribute different values to the same property, which is not reflected in any sort of assessed value. I’ll explain with a question: If I say a property is worth $30k and you say it’s worth $100k what should the assessed value be?

rcpt 7y ago
> there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything) There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". I'm not very familiar with finance so I'm not sure if this is what you you're getting at. But your idea, that land can't be taxed because it has no value, can't possibly be new as these questions have been around for literally hundreds of years. That being said, I've never heard it before and would be genuinely interested if you can link some papers or books.
- simplecomplex 7y ago
  > There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". If there is, then how would I calculate the intrinsic value of a piece of real estate, to levy a tax on it? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value