3 ms·

A land value tax alone would address the vast majority of this, considering that virtually all wealth derives from land access/ownership.

AgentOrange1234 3y ago
Is that still true? I’m probably in a software bubble, but like: none of FAANG have any real land holdings, for instance?
- yellowapple 3y ago
  Their servers exist somewhere, and while it's called The Cloud™, that ain't literal ;) Datacenters, offices, warehouses, factories... these all sit on top of land. Even a fully-remote company running off Raspberry Pis in someone's closet still requires some quantity of land on which the employees' homes and that closet full of Raspberry Pis sit. Even if the companies themselves don't own that land directly, somebody does.
- CrazyStat 3y ago
  I think it’s not a coincidence that land value tax is popular on Hacker News. Replacing all the taxes that tech companies currently pay with a land value tax that hardly affects them would be an incredible boon.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    It's an incredible boon to the vast majority of society. The only ones who suffer under LVT are land speculators and landlords.
BobaFloutist 3y ago
Almost anyone that's making substantial money off of land is already paying property tax on it, as well as any income tax that applies. Now, the income and the property taxes they're paying are in many cases woefully inadequate, but I'm pretty sure the solution to that is to improve the tax system and patch the loopholes, not to add a separate additional tax for everyone to keep track of.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  This wouldn't be a separate additional tax; the vast majority of LVT proponents (myself included) propose it to replace property/sales/income taxes (all of which are just economically-inefficient taxes on land anyway: http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html). As for loopholes, LVT is the most effective way to patch them; you can't exactly move land to offshore bank accounts, after all.

AgentOrange1234 3y ago

Is that still true? I’m probably in a software bubble, but like: none of FAANG have any real land holdings, for instance?

yellowapple 3y ago
Their servers exist somewhere, and while it's called The Cloud™, that ain't literal ;) Datacenters, offices, warehouses, factories... these all sit on top of land. Even a fully-remote company running off Raspberry Pis in someone's closet still requires some quantity of land on which the employees' homes and that closet full of Raspberry Pis sit. Even if the companies themselves don't own that land directly, somebody does.
CrazyStat 3y ago
I think it’s not a coincidence that land value tax is popular on Hacker News. Replacing all the taxes that tech companies currently pay with a land value tax that hardly affects them would be an incredible boon.
- yellowapple 3y ago
  It's an incredible boon to the vast majority of society. The only ones who suffer under LVT are land speculators and landlords.

BobaFloutist 3y ago

Almost anyone that's making substantial money off of land is already paying property tax on it, as well as any income tax that applies. Now, the income and the property taxes they're paying are in many cases woefully inadequate, but I'm pretty sure the solution to that is to improve the tax system and patch the loopholes, not to add a separate additional tax for everyone to keep track of.

yellowapple 3y ago
This wouldn't be a separate additional tax; the vast majority of LVT proponents (myself included) propose it to replace property/sales/income taxes (all of which are just economically-inefficient taxes on land anyway: http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/ATCOR.html). As for loopholes, LVT is the most effective way to patch them; you can't exactly move land to offshore bank accounts, after all.