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Comment by pydry | Hacker News Reader

Land value tax.

It could be made palatable to regular people by making a high tax free threshold. Most homeowners could be left unaffected.

That leaves 50% of land owned by the 1%. A fair chunk.

Additionally the money could be funneled initially into pensions for the impoverished elderly.

Capital/billionaires would fight back by arguing that it would hit the elderly the hardest just as the howard jarvis taxpayers foundation did with prop 13 but if it was very obvious how many elderly people were helped, crying about grandmothers having to sell multimillion dollar mansions would probably backfire.

They would throw immense resources at trying to discredit and kill this, though. They would use every character assassination trick in the book to stop those pushing it. Some would probably also resort to violence if that failed. It would be an uphill battle the whole way.

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"That leaves 50% of land owned by the 1%."

Is a lot of that farm land, like with Gates?

I thought a lot of the investors are involved with apartments, which don't take up much land?

Maybe somebody can clarify, but wouldn't that land also be much less taxable per acre because the value is lower?

That's part of what I'm missing here. How is that value calculated?

LVT is generally conceptualised as proportional to the value of the land, not it's area.

And how do you set that if excluding the type of property that's on it?

I fail to see the relevance, land is zoned for farming or reaidential, that sets it value

You could reform zoning, but its not a requirement

Without reforming zoning, it is largely useless. Sure it might cause some improvements in places underutilizing their land but I think most places are using their land for the highest value thing it is zoned for.

If I have a SFH zoned for SFH in the heart of manhattan next to skyscrapers, the value of the land isn't based on the skyscrapers, it is based on what you can put on it and you can prove that by selling it for which nobody is going to pay as if you could put a skyscraper there.

"underutilizing their land but I think most places are using their land for the highest value thing it is zoned for."

In urban or higher density suburban areas, I think you're mostly right. But in lower density areas, a lot of the land is multi purpose or has few restrictions. So technically, you could build apartments or homes on land that is used as agriculture. However, there might not be demand for it in that area. Essentially, the tax-by-zoning works well in the situations where zoning is restrictive and demand is high. But in low density areas where the actual use is not well defined with a single zoning use, the value would be potentially arbitrary or inaccurate (making property tax a better measure of value).

So I could build a mansion or a small house and pay the same, just because I'm paying for the zoning. And of course zoning could change and much of it can also have dual use. This complicates the calculation and can lead to surprises.

It seems current actual land usage through property tax better accounts for the way the land is being used, is more stable, less arbitrary, and implicitly complies with the existing zoning.

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