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Comment by PatientTrades | Hacker News Reader

> a land-value tax is an efficient and fair way to take a city that now works only for lucky prosperous landowners

And what happens if you cannot afford the land tax? Does your home get taken away? The idea that only rich people own land is baseless. There are many poor people that own moderate/cheap homes on prime real estate in places like LA and San Diego. Most of these homes were built several decades and their property taxes were capped allowing them to stay in their homes. There needs to be a provision that certain individuals can avoid this land tax based on their income otherwise many people will lose their home because they can't pay the tax.

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> And what happens if you cannot afford the land tax? Does your home get taken away?

That can happen with property tax too though.

If the land tax goes that high, it means more value could be extracted from that land by building more densely on it. One way this could play out for a cash-poor landowner is to sell the land to a condo developer in exchange for a couple of condos in the new building and payment for temporary housing while construction is going on. I've known this kind of exchange to happen in many Indian cities. It works out very well for both parties.

People already pay property taxes on their homes, though. LVT would eliminate taxing the improvements and structures and instead just tax the land itself, so the maximum assessed value would decrease.

Additionally, this would ideally be implemented while also eliminating income taxes (and general sales taxes). One of the biggest benefits of this is that we would no longer _need_ to track everyone's income, and could even eliminate vasts amounts of bureaucracy like the IRS and state-level departments.

>And what happens if you cannot afford the land tax? Does your home get taken away?

There's usually an exemption on some dollar amount of LVT for your primary residence, provided that the municipality can verify it's actually your primary residence.

I'm excited that you're stumbled into "taxation is theft" :) Yup, taxation is inherently immoral, and they will lock you in a cage if you don't pay.

But. As long as we're comfortable taxing people, then why is it unjust to tax in this way? We're taxing in a way that allows the land to be better utilized for _everyone_.

Additionally, this person who bought this property decades can probably sell the property for a pretty penny, and move to a cheaper area, and have plenty of cash leftover.

> lock you in a cage if you don't pay.

I'm pretty sure you can not actually be imprisoned for failure to pay income taxes. You can be for filing fraudulent tax returns though. You can have the IRS take money from your bank account for not filing taxes though.

> I'm excited that you're stumbled into "taxation is theft" :) Yup, taxation is inherently immoral, and they will lock you in a cage if you don't pay.

Okay, let's reframe it this way: the people collectively own all land through a corporation called The Government, where each person of voting age gets one voting share. The Government rents out land to individuals for a fee equal to the Land Value Tax...

The Poor Widow Bogey: http://kaalvtn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-poor-widow-bogey.htm...

Land Doesn't Generate Income: http://kaalvtn.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/c-land-doesnt-generate...

> There are many poor people that own moderate/cheap homes on prime real estate in places like LA and San Diego.

Then they aren't poor.

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