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It's a tax on the (arguably undeserved) gains in the market value of your land that come from other people's efforts as opposed to your own.
by satyrnein 7y ago
It's a tax on the (arguably undeserved) gains in the market value of your land that come from other people's efforts as opposed to your own.
- nybble41 7y agoLVT makes no distinction between value resulting from your own efforts outside the property itself and value resulting from others' efforts. In any case, recognizing the potential in a piece of land and investing resources to secure it and hold it in reserve until that potential can best be realized (i.e. "speculation") is also effort worthy of reward.
- satyrnein 7y agoYes, this is why I called it "arguably" undeserved. It's not totally black and white. The best argument against LVT that I came across was from Bryan Caplan concerning prospecting for oil; once a person finds oil and builds a well, LVT would not charge her for the well, but it would charge her for the oil. She didn't make the oil, but finding it does take effort and you don't want to disincentive that. I still like LVT conceptually but I don't know what the best solution is for this kind of case.