To your first point: You're still getting an estimate, not a value. My question is what makes a particular plot of land in a particular area worth a particular

To your first point: You're still getting an estimate, not a value. My question is what makes a particular plot of land in a particular area worth a particular amount of money? I mean the actual value, not a "value" determined by proxy of one's nearest neighbor. If the assessor is not pulling a number out of his hat, where is he getting the dollar amount from? As you pointed out there are empty plots of land with no owner. Where does the assessed value of empty unoccupied land come from? And what makes that assessed value the "correct" one for the purposes of LVT? (Note:assessed value is not necessarily the same as purchase price) To your second point: You understand that land has differing value/utility to each purchaser or potential purchaser. LVT does not recognize this. It only assumes that if you have more land, you should be taxed more. The farmer would obviously suffer in comparison to the city dweller. However, as a critique of your point, few San Franciscans make actual money off their land or real estate (landlords excluded). The fact that they *can* make money off their land, does not mean they are. To be taxed as though one were making money off of land is to use a legal fiction to justify a particular policy. It doesn't solve an inefficiency in land distribution but creates one.