This might sound good in theory, but it is a very hard sell to say that's how it pans out in practice. You even say: "This doesn't work with anything that has elastic supply like buildings" - so as soon as you put a building (apartments) on the property, this theory goes out the window.
> But it's well understood and accepted in the economic literature that landlords end up paying the tax not tenants.
I don't dispute that there would be some competition among landlords as to how much of their LVT they can pass off to tenants - it wouldn't be 100%. But to claim that there would be no impact to tenants strikes me as hilariously naive.
If you have a fundamental objection to how the established theory of supply and demand curves works I can’t really help you. Large parts of economics have shown it to be successful and I certainly trust it over anecdotal arguments about how landlords will pass on the tax.
Based on the demand curve any attempt to pass on the tax will result in empty land and less overall revenue due to the mispricing. This at a minimum means some landlords will be very unhappy.
As other people pointed out, there should/would have to be some mechanism to value the land for the LVT. The land the apartment building is built on in the city would have a higher value than some 2 acres out in the country. The owner of that land would have to pay the LVT, and the rent for an apartment on that land would reflect that - ultimately making everyone who lives in the apartment pay that tax, if indirectly.