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Thanks for all the details! Limiting a land value tax to densely populated areas is a great detail here. Sorry if I end up with a long list of follow-up questio

Thanks for all the details! Limiting a land value tax to densely populated areas is a great detail here. Sorry if I end up with a long list of follow-up questions here, this is really interesting. So my main concern related to destruction of natural land is that there is a disincentive to keep land natural if you have to pay the tax anyway. In dense areas that wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue, but it would still mean that parks would be an unlikely occurrence and likely only feasible when run by the government. I assume most parks in these areas are anyway, so the loss may be limited to smaller neighborhood parks, courtyards, etc. Finding a clear way to draw a line between what area is dense enough to be taxed and what isn't seems like it would be an ongoing challenge. Not only would you have to define specific measures and thresholds, you would have to eventually move the line as the city evolved. Any thoughts on his this would be done, or already is in areas with a similar tax? When it comes to "best use" of a piece of land, who decides this? Does that measure really just boil down to whatever spends the most capital to build on the land, without regard for economic or social value, environmental impacts on the land and surrounding area, etc? It seems like this would lead to a lot of economic and social impacts that aren't necessarily desirable. Is there a clear way to guard this system from building higher and higher economic centers, inflating incomes and forcing even more of a wedge into the wealth gap? In you example, a car wash would be able to employee people at a lower once level in the area where a much more expensive biotech building would mostly employ highly educated people who bring much higher price pressure to the area. Can that be avoided with a tax that incentivizes building more expensive, and likely more technical/specialized, businesses on every plot of land? Related to that, what's the solution for infrastructure and resource requirements? Large biotech facilities would likely require more power, transportation and delivery access, maintenance, and building materials. If we are simultaneously concerned with environmental impact, creating incentives to build much larger building with much higher resource requirements flies in the face of this. Would we be creating a situation where businesses are pushed to use more energy, concrete, steel, and glass partly because a tax makes smaller businesses less feasible? --- Well that ended up being a bit of a brain dump with questions mixed in. If you made it this far, thanks for playing along!

Retric 3y ago
> So my main concern related to destruction of natural land is that there is a disincentive to keep land natural if you have to pay the tax anyway. There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. With the property if the tax is say 0.2%. An acre of farmland worth in rural Idaho worth 20k would be assessed as being worth 20k in a land value tax and an acre of swamp might be worth 1,000$. Meanwhile an acre in Manhattan might be valued at 200 million, and the ~5 orders of magnitude difference in taxation would therefore apply dramatically different results. The farmland’s 40$/year in taxes isn’t pushing anyone to sell, the swamp’s 2$/year in taxes is irrelevant for most people. But eating 400k in taxes on a manhattan parking lot is definitely pushing someone to be more productive with it.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  > The farmland’s 40$/year in taxes isn’t pushing anyone to sell I don't think that's an easy assumption to make. Cost of living, average income, and average plot size are very different in rural areas. I don't know Idaho so I can't speak to land value there, but I can say farmable land in rural Alabama goes for between $1k and $6k per acre depending on the land. If you really want to farm it for anything more than a homestead, 40+ acres is a minimum IMO. On the high end that works out to $480/year, but with an average income in the area closer to $25k/year that number isn't insignificant when its a tax just for the right to continue to own land I already bought. Add to that the extreme challenge of even breaking even in farming today, I'd be impressed if anyone farming 40 acres in rural Alabama could reliably turn $25k in profit each year. Related to that while we're at it, what is the government's justification for taxing the value of land I own outright? Are we classifying land and property ownership as a privilege rather than a right? And in a rural area where land isn't changing hands as frequently and farmland can often sit for sale for months or years, how does the government accurately assess value? In my own experience land value in rural areas is only really adjusted when new structures are built or a specific parcel changes hands, but maybe that is handled differently elsewhere.
  - BirdieNZ 3y ago
    For land assessment, many countries or municipalities assess it regularly. In my country (New Zealand), most city councils re-assess land value and improvements value every three years (and charge council rates based on them).

Retric 3y ago

> So my main concern related to destruction of natural land is that there is a disincentive to keep land natural if you have to pay the tax anyway. There’s no need to limit land value taxes based on density as that’s what’s giving land its value. With the property if the tax is say 0.2%. An acre of farmland worth in rural Idaho worth 20k would be assessed as being worth 20k in a land value tax and an acre of swamp might be worth 1,000$. Meanwhile an acre in Manhattan might be valued at 200 million, and the ~5 orders of magnitude difference in taxation would therefore apply dramatically different results. The farmland’s 40$/year in taxes isn’t pushing anyone to sell, the swamp’s 2$/year in taxes is irrelevant for most people. But eating 400k in taxes on a manhattan parking lot is definitely pushing someone to be more productive with it.

_heimdall 3y ago
> The farmland’s 40$/year in taxes isn’t pushing anyone to sell I don't think that's an easy assumption to make. Cost of living, average income, and average plot size are very different in rural areas. I don't know Idaho so I can't speak to land value there, but I can say farmable land in rural Alabama goes for between $1k and $6k per acre depending on the land. If you really want to farm it for anything more than a homestead, 40+ acres is a minimum IMO. On the high end that works out to $480/year, but with an average income in the area closer to $25k/year that number isn't insignificant when its a tax just for the right to continue to own land I already bought. Add to that the extreme challenge of even breaking even in farming today, I'd be impressed if anyone farming 40 acres in rural Alabama could reliably turn $25k in profit each year. Related to that while we're at it, what is the government's justification for taxing the value of land I own outright? Are we classifying land and property ownership as a privilege rather than a right? And in a rural area where land isn't changing hands as frequently and farmland can often sit for sale for months or years, how does the government accurately assess value? In my own experience land value in rural areas is only really adjusted when new structures are built or a specific parcel changes hands, but maybe that is handled differently elsewhere.
- BirdieNZ 3y ago
  For land assessment, many countries or municipalities assess it regularly. In my country (New Zealand), most city councils re-assess land value and improvements value every three years (and charge council rates based on them).