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>I am saying that your specific objections to taxing unrealised gains do not apply. I dont see how referencing borrowing is relevant to taxation. >Ie income t

>I am saying that your specific objections to taxing unrealised gains do not apply. I dont see how referencing borrowing is relevant to taxation. >Ie income tax bad? Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. People can become wealthier. People without income dont pay the tax so arent negatively affected. If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. >Btw, you could run a land value tax but give everyone a universal basic income equivalent to the LVT paid by the median person. I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals.

orthoxerox 1y ago
> If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. Again, that's the whole idea behind LVT: it minimizes non-productive use of land, like housing.
- eru 1y ago
  No, LVT does not minimise non-productive use of land at all. I like LVT just as much as the next guy, but we can't have it both ways: _either_ LVT has no deadweight losses, because it doesn't change any opportunity costs for land use and thus has no (direct) influence on land use. _Or_ LVT does have an influence, and you want to argue that it's the 'correct' one. However: with or without LVT, the opportunity cost differences in different land uses are exactly the same. The same amount of LVT is due no matter what you do with the land or who owns it. LVT might have an indirect influence on land use, because financing your government via LVT means you can potentially lower other less efficient taxes. Removing these other more distorting taxes can have an influence on land uses.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  I am having a hard time understanding your last sentence. How is housing a non-productive use of land? Why would housing be something to be minimized?
  - eru 1y ago
    They probably means something like some poor single person sitting on a very valuable plot of land and not doing much with it. Maybe? I'm not exactly sure. But see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482
eru 1y ago
> I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals. What's with you and punishment? LVT should be set to approximately tax all land rents. Given current prevailing interest rates, setting LVT to, say, a yearly 10% of land value should accomplish that. (But the exact value doesn't matter too much, because of arbitrage. I can explain that, if you want to. Basically, as LVT goes up, market prices for land go down. So even setting an LVT of 50% per year won't get you more of a tax take then saner values.) Just to be clear, I don't propose the UBI above as something anyone could live off. I proposed to mechanically set it to eg the 20%-ile of LVT payments, so that the land-poorest 20% of the population have no net LVT payments to make. Thus forestalling only your very specific objection. That suggestion was not meant to pay for any specific living standard on its own. > Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. Why are you so obsessed with income that's measured in money? There's also plenty of in-kind income. Eg when you have an apple tree, you get apples. If you have a house, you get housing. It's generally good, if the tax system doesn't care, if you rent his house and she rents yours, or if both of you live in your own home. (Neither scenario has any net flows of money, but the first one has gross flows of money.) Interestingly, in Switzerland people actually pay taxes on the imputed rental income they get from being owner-occupiers.
- protocolture 1y ago
  I really cant hit a moving target. I cant explain the economic flaws in your arguments faster than you can generate flawed arguments. >LVT should be set to approximately tax all land rents. What does this even mean? >so that the land-poorest 20% of the population have no net LVT payments to make. Right but you just added a huge cost that you have to tax from somewhere. So the LVT rate goes up again. (Very common experience discussing LVT - New taxes, regulations and handouts that will randomly make criticism go away) >Why are you so obsessed with income that's measured in money? Why are you against it lmao? >There's also plenty of in-kind income. Eg when you have an apple tree, you get apples. If you have a house, you get housing. How is this relevant to anything being discussed? And under an LVT, having a house or apple tree gets you a tax bill, measured in money. Of course economic calculation is relevant. >What's with you and punishment? I don't have a better description for what you want to happen to people with income lower than their LVT bill. Feel free to suggest something. "Economic Defenstration" maybe.

orthoxerox 1y ago

> If you tax someone with 5 bucks in their bank account and no job, 10% of their 200K property, they arent going to accrue 90% of their property on an ongoing basis. Their wealth will shrink. Which is bad on average. Again, that's the whole idea behind LVT: it minimizes non-productive use of land, like housing.

eru 1y ago
No, LVT does not minimise non-productive use of land at all. I like LVT just as much as the next guy, but we can't have it both ways: _either_ LVT has no deadweight losses, because it doesn't change any opportunity costs for land use and thus has no (direct) influence on land use. _Or_ LVT does have an influence, and you want to argue that it's the 'correct' one. However: with or without LVT, the opportunity cost differences in different land uses are exactly the same. The same amount of LVT is due no matter what you do with the land or who owns it. LVT might have an indirect influence on land use, because financing your government via LVT means you can potentially lower other less efficient taxes. Removing these other more distorting taxes can have an influence on land uses.
sokoloff 1y ago
I am having a hard time understanding your last sentence. How is housing a non-productive use of land? Why would housing be something to be minimized?
- eru 1y ago
  They probably means something like some poor single person sitting on a very valuable plot of land and not doing much with it. Maybe? I'm not exactly sure. But see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44189482

eru 1y ago

> I often see these joined but IIRC I did some math on this, and UBI would make your LVT extremely punishing. I wouldnt group them together as proposals. What's with you and punishment? LVT should be set to approximately tax all land rents. Given current prevailing interest rates, setting LVT to, say, a yearly 10% of land value should accomplish that. (But the exact value doesn't matter too much, because of arbitrage. I can explain that, if you want to. Basically, as LVT goes up, market prices for land go down. So even setting an LVT of 50% per year won't get you more of a tax take then saner values.) Just to be clear, I don't propose the UBI above as something anyone could live off. I proposed to mechanically set it to eg the 20%-ile of LVT payments, so that the land-poorest 20% of the population have no net LVT payments to make. Thus forestalling only your very specific objection. That suggestion was not meant to pay for any specific living standard on its own. > Yes its horrible. But if you tax 10% on income, you are left with 90% of your income on an ongoing basis, and that can accrue. Why are you so obsessed with income that's measured in money? There's also plenty of in-kind income. Eg when you have an apple tree, you get apples. If you have a house, you get housing. It's generally good, if the tax system doesn't care, if you rent his house and she rents yours, or if both of you live in your own home. (Neither scenario has any net flows of money, but the first one has gross flows of money.) Interestingly, in Switzerland people actually pay taxes on the imputed rental income they get from being owner-occupiers.

protocolture 1y ago
I really cant hit a moving target. I cant explain the economic flaws in your arguments faster than you can generate flawed arguments. >LVT should be set to approximately tax all land rents. What does this even mean? >so that the land-poorest 20% of the population have no net LVT payments to make. Right but you just added a huge cost that you have to tax from somewhere. So the LVT rate goes up again. (Very common experience discussing LVT - New taxes, regulations and handouts that will randomly make criticism go away) >Why are you so obsessed with income that's measured in money? Why are you against it lmao? >There's also plenty of in-kind income. Eg when you have an apple tree, you get apples. If you have a house, you get housing. How is this relevant to anything being discussed? And under an LVT, having a house or apple tree gets you a tax bill, measured in money. Of course economic calculation is relevant. >What's with you and punishment? I don't have a better description for what you want to happen to people with income lower than their LVT bill. Feel free to suggest something. "Economic Defenstration" maybe.