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My default reaction to 1) is that I dislike it. I feel like the incentive to labour to accept the tax of unimproved land value instead of property tax is the re
by TimPC 4y ago
My default reaction to 1) is that I dislike it. I feel like the incentive to labour to accept the tax of unimproved land value instead of property tax is the removal of income and sales taxes that accompany it. Taxing unimproved land value instead of improved land value in a system as close as possible to the current one feels like a massive wealth transfer from homeowners to condo developers. As it is, condos represent a problem for many communities in that they are often taxed at lower percentage rates and have a lower market value than houses. This means communities consisting of more condos have lower tax revenue per capita compared to communities consisting of more houses. Suburbs resist densification because the decreased revenue per capita generally means declining services. I think this a fundamental cause of NIMBY that largely gets ignored.
- geocon 4y agoI think you have a mistaken view of who is actually making money in this equation. Developers do not make all that much money from building housing, which is actually a productive contribution to society. Homeowners, on the other hand, make hand over fist by simply sitting on land absorbing rents: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyJN_g3UUAIW0f0?format=jpg&name=900x900 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EyJN_g3UUAIW0f0?format=jpg&name=... https://www.wsj.com/articles/homes-earned-more-for-owners-than-their-jobs-last-year-11647518400 https://www.wsj.com/articles/homes-earned-more-for-owners-th... Secondly, suburbs are drastically subsidized by denser development. They resist densification because they don't want to pay their fair share. https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment-dwellers-subsidize-suburban-homeowners https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...
- TimPC 4y agoI think it's misleading to measure things in revenue per square foot. Most government services aren't provided based on the number of square feet but rather based on the number of people. The per capita revenue for denser developments is lower than the per capita revenue for single family housing. When you get to rural densities you have issues of providing services because of the lack of scale of communities but suburbs are generally dense enough to afford services like police, fire, community centres and hospitals.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y agothe counter examples are things like roads, pipes, wires, and Public transit which make to up a high percent of city and state budgets and scale with density.
- TimPC 4y agoThese examples are fair. At the provincial level Transport, Pipes and Wires all are small enough expenditures to not warrant their own category breakdown in the budget and are lumped into a 14.6% of budget other category. At the city level it's tricky because the breakdown my city provides in the budget separates into capital and operating rather than other categories. From what I can tell from the 50 page report, water pipes cost approximately 25% of budget and transport costs approximately 5%. Wires aren't listed in enough details to get an estimate. My best sense from the numbers in the breakdown is the expenses for my suburb breakdown into roughly 60% per capita items, and 40% per area items. So 60% of our budget gets more expensive as you add people with low per capita taxation and 40% gets cheaper as you add more density.
- ericd 4y agoHow old is your community? Because road expenses are relatively low when they're new, but many communities aren't being fiscally responsible enough to budget appropriately for road maintenance.
- pyradius 4y agoYep the suburbs are a money-loser for governments as noted in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
- TimPC 4y agoSuburbs are a money-loser for governments if you allocate income tax revenue at the location of the job. That isn't really a fair allocation though, as suburbs are part of the reason professionals take jobs in big cities. If you either average the income tax revenue between where someone lives and where someone works or put it entirely where someone lives suburbs easily pay for themselves.
- pyradius 4y agoAlas there is no relationship between an income tax and personal consumption of spatial services. There is absolutely no coherent reason to do as you suggest, and every reason for the land to pay the cost of delivering those services, along with the rest of the rental value of land.
- TimPC 4y agoI’m not suggesting altering the flow of tax money. I’m suggesting changing how it’s measured when you determine which communities are sources and sinks. It’s very superficial to say a city with a job generates 100% of the income tax from that job when the city doesn’t house the person and provides barely and services to that person or their family. If you measure things that way of course cities are the only tax sources. But it’s a bad way to measure things. It’s more reasonable to measure where taxes are coming from by some combination of where people live and where they work. If you do this then suburbs are not tax sinks. This isn’t saying you change how you distribute tax revenue it’s only saying you change how you measure where it comes from.
- imtringued 4y agoThat's a recipe for corruption. If a politician receives no strings attached income taxes even if those are intended to be spent to improve location and pay for infrastructure, he is sure to spend them as if they have none of those strings attached.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]