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I find this very interesting, why do you think there’s opposition to it? So property owners don’t get taxed on the real value of their assets?

• paganel 5y ago
  > why do you think there’s opposition to it? There's still lots of small property owners that are still poor that would prefer not paying taxes on their small holdings.
• pjc50 5y ago
  Not everywhere has US style property taxes. More likely the problem relates to ownership and title: quite likely a lot of property will technically be squatting. The book "The Other Path" by Hernando de Soto goes into this; the best solution is to award title to long term occupiers.
• true_religion 5y ago
  For instance in Ghana, most land is leasehold not freehold due to the fact that land historically belonged to a family group or community rather than a person. Thus central government schemes to tax land have two arguments against them. First is that no one knows who will be taxed, and since who is taxed is synonymous with who owns the property that’s an added problem as people believe they are being unfairly deprived of their birth rights. Secondly, taxing property which is leasehold is problematic as the people making use of the land aren’t the owners. The owners have generally already spent the leasehold advance, and in the case of 99 year leases are likely already dead. So, the only people you can collect from are the tenants which leads you right back into problem 1. In practice though, people pay property tax on assessed value of buildings, but it’s not the same as land tax so an unfinished building can be counted as worthless depending on its state.