4 ms·

To answer your last question: it depends! Cranking up property tax or land tax still sucks. Sure, maybe you can buy land now, but what if you want to live on i

To answer your last question: it depends! Cranking up property tax or land tax still sucks. Sure, maybe you can buy land now, but what if you want to live on it? Your house doesn't earn you income (i.e. what you build on your land is not "productive"), so you're stuck paying taxes on something that doesn't give you any fiscal value. In practice, this doesn't help housing crises very much, but it _does_ increase wealth disparity! People who could previously afford a home now have to sell their property and either rent from somewhere, or buy a cheaper, presumably worse property. The increased property taxes also get passed from landlord to renter, up to what the market will bear. This is also bad, because it significantly increases the cost of living. Overall, there's no direct relationship between more expensive/less expensive housing and whether land/property is taxed. It's usually a challenge of efficient zoning etc. Now, one alternative that I'm interested in would be an "surplus land tax", i.e., if you own a property for the purposes of living on it, there is minimal or no taxation. Then if you buy more property for some reason, the tax is significantly higher (why do you, as an individual, need more land?). This discourages people from owning a surplus of land, while (hopefully) avoiding the increase in wealth disparity. If you want land for the purpose of a business, the revenue from the business should ideally cover any applicable land taxes.

hibikir 2y ago
The tax doesn't really increase wealth disparity, as your example with no tax requires someone being able to buy the land in the first place. If the land is still very desirable, the person that owns a very well located plot is extremely wealthy by investing when it was cheap, or having a lot of money. The wealth disparity is still there, just with a different winner. Your surplus idea has significant problems: First, good luck if you aren't owning a single family home, as then you aren't tax free. Second, that you can still massively speculate by buying the highest valued land you can, in the largest plot possible, and then have the best leverage. So prices of land don't go down, but way up! And that's while the land is also less useful to neighbors, as a large plot with a house in it is far worse than, say, a corner store, a park, or an office. So you are rewarding the land use that is the lowest value to neighbors, while theoretically calling that affordability. If you want more desirable land to be available to more people, the only sensible alternative is to make more people be able to use it at a time: Anything else is just picking a different favorite way to decide who gets to use it/buy it. It also makes the land more useful in general: The bay area would be much lower balue than it is now if it was occupied by a sole proprietor who is the only one traversing its current streets and buildings.
- floating-io 2y ago
  > The tax doesn't really increase wealth disparity[...] Counterpoint: Where I live the land values have, at minimum, 4x'ed in the last couple of decades. This used to be a sleepy little retirement town, where retirees lived far away from the city, where nobody was interested in living except for those retirees -- hence why it was so inexpensive. Those retirees are now being driven out en masse because they can no longer afford their property taxes. These people retired on salaries and retirement packages (if they were lucky) from twenty and thirty years ago. They do not have an income beyond that. They are not millionaires, or anywhere close. Often, they're retired blue collar workers, barely getting by. They cannot actually purchase an equivalent property if they sell their own even at the higher rates-- --because they can no longer afford the taxes on it, and all the other properties around them have gone up just as much in value. They were driven up by the vastly wealthier tech types. These people have nowhere reasonable to move. Bear in mind, we're not necessarily talking about multi-acre properties here, btw; we're talking modest homes that these people have been living in for fifty or more years. They're being driven out because the much richer folk value their property. And to make matters worse? If they do sell the property, they instantly lose what little tax cap protection they had, so they'll be paying even more in taxes. How is that not wealth disparity? If the tax hadn't gone up, they'd still be happily living there. They're only being pushed out because the younger, richer folk want their land. If that's not increasing wealth disparity, then I don't know what is.
  - jellicle 2y ago
    I think you'll find that even as land values have increased, your local city or county has been slashing tax rates, such that taxes paid have not gone up for these people at all, or only slightly. Heck, if you're in California they're probably paying about $10 in property taxes due to Prop. 13.
    - floating-io 2y ago
      No, I really won't. This is a well known issue in my area. Considering that I haven't said where I live, you shouldn't make assumptions.
timerol 2y ago
> In practice, this doesn't help housing crises very much, but it _does_ increase wealth disparity! Is your claim that LVT increases wealth disparity? Would it be accurate to assert the flip side of that, that laws like Prop 13 in CA help with wealth disparity? Because, uh, that doesn't seem to be how it's worked out, in practice.
- Arch485 2y ago
  Yes that is my claim, no I don't think Prop 13 would fix wealth disparity.

hibikir 2y ago

The tax doesn't really increase wealth disparity, as your example with no tax requires someone being able to buy the land in the first place. If the land is still very desirable, the person that owns a very well located plot is extremely wealthy by investing when it was cheap, or having a lot of money. The wealth disparity is still there, just with a different winner. Your surplus idea has significant problems: First, good luck if you aren't owning a single family home, as then you aren't tax free. Second, that you can still massively speculate by buying the highest valued land you can, in the largest plot possible, and then have the best leverage. So prices of land don't go down, but way up! And that's while the land is also less useful to neighbors, as a large plot with a house in it is far worse than, say, a corner store, a park, or an office. So you are rewarding the land use that is the lowest value to neighbors, while theoretically calling that affordability. If you want more desirable land to be available to more people, the only sensible alternative is to make more people be able to use it at a time: Anything else is just picking a different favorite way to decide who gets to use it/buy it. It also makes the land more useful in general: The bay area would be much lower balue than it is now if it was occupied by a sole proprietor who is the only one traversing its current streets and buildings.

floating-io 2y ago
> The tax doesn't really increase wealth disparity[...] Counterpoint: Where I live the land values have, at minimum, 4x'ed in the last couple of decades. This used to be a sleepy little retirement town, where retirees lived far away from the city, where nobody was interested in living except for those retirees -- hence why it was so inexpensive. Those retirees are now being driven out en masse because they can no longer afford their property taxes. These people retired on salaries and retirement packages (if they were lucky) from twenty and thirty years ago. They do not have an income beyond that. They are not millionaires, or anywhere close. Often, they're retired blue collar workers, barely getting by. They cannot actually purchase an equivalent property if they sell their own even at the higher rates-- --because they can no longer afford the taxes on it, and all the other properties around them have gone up just as much in value. They were driven up by the vastly wealthier tech types. These people have nowhere reasonable to move. Bear in mind, we're not necessarily talking about multi-acre properties here, btw; we're talking modest homes that these people have been living in for fifty or more years. They're being driven out because the much richer folk value their property. And to make matters worse? If they do sell the property, they instantly lose what little tax cap protection they had, so they'll be paying even more in taxes. How is that not wealth disparity? If the tax hadn't gone up, they'd still be happily living there. They're only being pushed out because the younger, richer folk want their land. If that's not increasing wealth disparity, then I don't know what is.
- jellicle 2y ago
  I think you'll find that even as land values have increased, your local city or county has been slashing tax rates, such that taxes paid have not gone up for these people at all, or only slightly. Heck, if you're in California they're probably paying about $10 in property taxes due to Prop. 13.
  - floating-io 2y ago
    No, I really won't. This is a well known issue in my area. Considering that I haven't said where I live, you shouldn't make assumptions.

timerol 2y ago

> In practice, this doesn't help housing crises very much, but it _does_ increase wealth disparity! Is your claim that LVT increases wealth disparity? Would it be accurate to assert the flip side of that, that laws like Prop 13 in CA help with wealth disparity? Because, uh, that doesn't seem to be how it's worked out, in practice.

Arch485 2y ago
Yes that is my claim, no I don't think Prop 13 would fix wealth disparity.