Put another way:
If I have $1B, and I buy $1B of land, that creates no value, and raises prices for everyone.
If I have $1B and I start or fund a company which produces a new medical device, computer, or car, I've created massive economic value, both in the inputs (hiring people) and outputs (new technology).
Land is also a scarce resource we all need to share fairly (for whatever 'fairly' means). If you have more, everyone else has less. On the other hand, if you're investing in making movies, I can make my own movies too. There is no fundamental limit to that sort of economic growth.
Most people won't care about some Rolex that someone around the world is willing to pay $100K for.
Land has purposeful value rather than just 'worth'
Imagine someone buying a house somewhere cheap. Then some gentrification, a new microsoft campus built nearby, etc., and the price of the house jumps 10x+. You're on a fixed income, and your taxes are now higher then you can afford.
If you have multiple houses, sure, tax the second, third, etc. one (evn though the taxes are then charged as higher rents if you lease those properties), but the first, primary residence should not be taxed as a "profit maker".
Maybe it's a cultural difference, but here in the balkans, people rarely move, and telling a 75yo grandma that she'll have to move, since her socialist built apartment is now worth 500k eur+, because "investors" want it for airbnb, and she cannot afford taxes on it, is just evil.
Are we seriously saying that if someone can no longer afford tax on a land they already own because the rich need to get richer, you should sell?
Basically you're asking for normal people to work, get raises forever and hope nothing crazy happens that can raise land value in their neighborhood in order to keep the land they already own.
No, this is not in "society's best interest". This is in the capitalist's best interests. Those are very different.
Comments like these make me not want to live in this world anymore. I really hope I misunderstood the comment. What the f***.
It is purely about how much land you sit on and where. That's it.
> Basically you're asking for normal people to work, get raises forever
Nope, it mostly incentivizes real estate hoarders to start making productive use of there land. It allows normal people to buy houses because this system inventivizes the increase of supply.
> land they already own because the rich need to get richer, you should sell?
If your lad value tax increases enough to be unpayable, then your house has likely appreciated 3x+. This makes you one of the rich.
There are no new houses in the neighborhood so the normal person can't afford a house. With land value tax, you can sell the land, make bank, and allow access to greater housing through upzoning. The normal person benefits greatly.
Either housing is an investment or an essential commodity. It can't be both.
So effectively normal people that don't own empty land will not pay this or pay an equivalent of the previous taxes?
> If your lad value tax increases enough to be unpayable, then your house has likely appreciated 3x+.
I guess you could try to argue that but I still feel like that's going to hurt folks. Imagine a scenario where I live somewhere for decades. Suddenly there's a new subway or some other factor that increases the value of the land enough that I can't pay for it.
Now I'm forced to leave this place when it finally becomes better to live in. In theory if I sold it, it would make me some money, but that's not the same as saying I'm a rich person now.
It's also not free in the sense that I still have to move somewhere else, which will probably be worse than the current place I live, since I will be required to buy a house with a lower tax (less valuable).
I can see the benefits if this was part of a bigger set of changes that would overall benefit everyone. But in isolation it seems like it will hurt normal folks and companies will just turn their empty plots into useless parking lots (or some other loophole they will find) to say it's "valuable".
I can imagine it.
That is exactly what happened to my neighborhood in India. Small residential condo community where Dad and I grew up. Everyone knows everyone sort of place. Our neighborhood suddenly turned into the hipster capital of India and began gentrifying and taxes started becoming unaffordable.
You know what people did ?
Took a deal to have their 5-storey condo redeveloped into a 30 storey one over 3 years. Everyone gets decent upfront cash, a huge rental allowance for the duration of the construction, 2x larger houses and more luxurious amenities.
Everyone is falling over themselves to have these deals signed. Yes, people waited till the last generation passed away, since they didn't want huge changes for those in their 80s. But, as those in their 50s-60s are heading into retirement, they are delighted to be able to retire wealthier, in a bigger house for 'free'.
The community has not been displaced, since everyone who lives here will still live here. Young families can buy apartments in one of the most accessible parts of town. Quality of life is better for everyone.
Who offers these deals? Is it the government or private corporations? I'm struggling to see how one profits from this (which is normally the only reason companies do anything) so I'm very curious.
This really does sound like a win/win situation if it's like you described it! Here I only hear/read stories about people losing their homes without any other option other than selling.
The 5 floor condo gets converted into a 30 floor tower. The residents gets 2x space and the first 10-ish floors. The rest goes to the private builder to sell to whoever they want as profits. It often involves demolition of 3-4 buildings into 1 large building. So a lot of wasted space also gets brought into building floorspace.
Skipping past your other points, I just wanted to reply to this sentence, since it seems to show a deep confusion/misunderstanding (perhaps on my behalf!).
- Land owners won't get to "say" how valuable their land is; that's determined by the market, assessors, etc.
- Given the chance, land owners would try to say their land's less valuable; since higher value means a higher tax bill.
- Land value tax is (as the name suggests) based on the value of the land; not what's on it. The tax for an empty lot is the same as a parking lot (or a skyscraper, for that matter).
- If anything, turning an empty lot into a car park may increase the company's tax bill. For example, if a lack of parking bottlenecked the area's economic growth, the new lot would allow more development nearby, increasing the area's land value, and hence increasing the company's tax bill.
- Turning an empty lot into a parking lot has construction costs (I'm assuming our company doesn't care about ongoing maintenance). Since the land value tax is unaffected (or even increased!), the only reason to construct a car park is when its predicted revenue is higher than its construction cost. The predicted revenue of a purposefully-useless parking lot is low, so there's no incentive to pay its construction cost: better to leave the plot empty!
- If the company can't use the land to bring in revenue that (a) pays off any initial capital/construction costs, and (b) exceeds the ongoing costs (including the constant land value tax!), then it should sell the land to avoid having to pay the tax.
- The only ones willing to buy the land off them (and hence take on its tax burden) are those who can make use of that land (either a company able to make a profit despite the tax liability; or people wanting to live there who are fine with paying the tax). In which case, the sale is incentivised and the land is put to better use.
PS: "From the outside" I'm sure there will be loopholes in theory, and in practice in Detroit. However, your example is pointing in the complete opposite direction of all the incentives, which looks "from the inside" like a lack of understanding.
They do need to make sure the tax is higher than the land value growth otherwise it wouldn't really work. Maybe it's not that hard, but with some of the price hikes I've seen, it could happen.
Honestly, I am very curious to see how this will pan out. Hopefully there isn't a giant loophole that will backfire as it happens with so many bills.
devil's advocate: No, not because of the rich but because of the poor. Buying a house decades ago was very possible on an average single person's salary. Nowadays, even upper income range couples have large troubles financing a house. So the situation is that you have lots of old people living in houses that they could never, ever afford at today's prices. The claim (no comment on whether it is correct or not) is that this causes massive distortion and that this proposal would fix it (doubt it, but that is the discussion).
> What the f*.
That is not helpful for a discussion. There is a problem stated and a (probably bad) proposal to address it. Instead of just saying "f*", address the problem and make a different proposal.
Fair enough. Edited that part off. I was simply extremely shocked at the implications, if I understood it correctly.
> So the situation is that you have lots of old people living in houses that they could never, ever afford at today's prices.
I don't think punishing people for what companies have done to inflate house prices is a good move though.
Screwing over people that bought houses that they live in instead of fixing the root cause issues that cause all this insane price hikes seems completely backwards to me.
Remember that companies or rich folks might have to pay some extra taxes but, in general, they can freaking afford it. Normal folks more often than not, can't.
The point of the proposal is that it is not an either or. In order to fix things you will have to also "screw over" people that have bought houses or people that currently can't buy houses. Long running problems are not quick and easy to fix and a fix will have collateral damage, not just "companies or rich folk".
Again: I am not taking a position on either side, but you are currently attacking a straw man.
The first is that if someone suddenly became wealthy because their house went up 3x in value and they want to continue living there then they can get a reverse mortgage. Assign that new found wealth in the equity to the bank in exchange for getting a monthly payment to pay the tax. If you're arguing they both should be able to stay, and keep the increase in equity that they contributed to them you're arguing housing should be a speculative investment (which leads to bad incentives).
> Screwing over people that bought houses that they live in instead of fixing the root causes for all these insane price hikes seems completely backwards to me.
The whole point is it's not. It's incentivising someone to move so they stop screwing over the 10-20 families they would like to buy a house but can't afford to because the supply is so low. By replacing the single story home with multi floor condos, more people can now afford homes in the area.
It's the society's best interest that people can afford places to live and not live under threat that some new fad will make something they already own (and need to survive) unaffordable.
In your example, if the grandma's house went from 200k to a 1million, then she isn't poor anymore. She is very rich.
She doesn't have to leave the neighborhood. She can give her house away for redevelopment into a condo. Get the nice penthouse flat and a pretty penny on the same land. Now, she has enough liquidity to pay the land value tax, which is also lower per person because it's distributed over the whole condo.
This is happening in India right now. Apartments are redeveloped into towers. Old residents get 2x the floor space and decent relocation $$ for the construction period. No one is being kicked out of their house. Most people move to another spot within a 10 minutes walk from their home for 3 years and then come back when the building is done.
The more realistic picture is that grandma living alone in a rather large, old house, whose price, heating etc. went up quite drastically. That is already happening, in particular the heating part. Just have a look at Europe and the UK. The question then is, and I am not picking a side here, whether you spend public money so she can afford to stay in that large house or you make changes.
We had a law, that somehow got repelled by some lobbyist, where all the public money given to help was then taken out of inheritance (so the kids had to either pay it back, or property got sold at an auction, government took the money and the kids got the rest). This would solve the help-money issue.
In practice, that grandma is stuck in a city where her children and grandchildren can no longer afford to buy real estate in. Friends and neighbors who rent are priced out and have to move regardless. The local goods and services rise in price and taxes go up, all under the current system. Her support network and community evaporate and soon she finds nothing left but to sell to a corporation, who is the only entity left that can afford the prices her house demands.
The first order effect of a Land Value Tax is that it shifts who pays the biggest burden of taxes. Grandma A who owns a big house in the center of a vibrant city where lots of young families are looking for homes near their jobs might see an increase in her taxes, but the Grandma B who owns a Condo in a larger complex will likely see her taxes drop. Grandma C who lives in a nice well-maintained house way out in the burbs will likely see a drop as well, most of her value is in the nice home she has been tenderly caring for her whole life.
A second order effect of LVT is it creates a suppressive effect on real estate prices. When prices in an area are going up across the board, this is entirely in the value of the land, which means LVT taxes are going to rise correspondingly. This additional tax liability significantly helps counteract a speculative rise in prices, leading to a lower and more stable pricing, and pushing out those who are just looking to speculate on trends. The value that a government creates for its citizens is recaptured and able to be reinvested, instead of going directly in the pockets of land speculators.
The third order effect is that this shifts the incentives around value creation vs value capturing. Perhaps the house next door to Grandma's is currently owned by a deadbeat landlord, Pennybags, who lets the house fall into disrepair, hoping to turn around and sell it as the market rises. Now all of a sudden Pennybag's plan is quickly becoming a bad investment. With LVT his property value is more heavily correlated with the actual quality of the house and less with value of the land. He is finding that despite an increasing demand in the area, his property is actually dropping in price. Meanwhile good ole Grandma has been diligently been taking care of her home, and adding value and the price of her home has actually gone up faster than the rise in taxes. She's able to use to use the increase in value to take out a loan to build an accessory unit she uses to now help her cover her increased taxes, which further increases her property value. Despite all of that, her taxes have not gone up at all!
A LVT would just shift property tax burden more toward empty lots or less-developed parcels and away from more-developed parcels. It wouldn't result in killing little old ladies.
Taxing land only disincentivizes land from being hoarded and being used inefficiently. It's not going to prevent the creation of new land.
Theres also the issue of fairness. Land owners didn't create the land or make it valuable. They just use it to extract rents. Asset creators did make their assets valuable and if they do rent them the value of the rents will be in proportion to the value of the work they put into them.
Also, importantly, you can't "hide" land (from taxation) by moving it out of the country.
Historical Georgists were also called "single taxers" because of the idea to abolish all other taxes, but make up for this by a tax on land ownership that leaves the state with the same income stream as before. Apart from being (in their view) socially good, this would also have the advantage that landowners couldn't just move their land to the Cayman Islands to evade the tax.
I don't think modern Georgists are quite that single-minded, but I do get the argument that, for example, VAT is a tax on the poor in the sense that even people whose income is low enough that they're not paying income tax in the usual sense have to pay it every time they buy something (unless it's exempt), but taxing land would truly be a tax on the more affluent only, at least in a country where most poor people rent their accommodation.
E.g. where I live it's just assumed that all your assets produce a yield of 4% yearly, and that is taxed as regular income. Makes the tax declaration also a lot easier, since people don't have to list all exact dividends and profits they might have gotten from investments.