* Land ownership is generally public record, or at least orchestrated at local government levels for property tax assessment, school enrollment eligiblity, and other similar local services.

* Some states already have concepts of presence-- different tax regimes for part-year residents versus full-year.

I'd expect that this would end up being relevant in only a very narrow set of cases. Most cases are slam-dunk clearly "owner occupier" versus "investor-owned", and hopefully they'd put more than a HN post worth of effort trying to define rules that handle the ambiguous cases.

I tend to be a bit suspicious of the LVT, because it can create toxic consequences for individual landowners.

Sure, if I have an empty lot and a new Job Factory opens next door, a rising LVT creates incentive for me to build. But if I already had a house there, my LVT has tripled and my house is no longer affordable.

Locking the LVT to the current owner might prevent that toxicity, but it also encourage all sorts of evasion strategies.