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Comment by Jensson | Hacker News Reader

No, it is enough that massively expanding your property wont increase your tax. That way you can build a lot more homes on your land and therefore become a lot richer without paying more taxes. There is no reason for the tax to be higher overall than before, its just what it incentivises. You might not take this opportunity but others will.

Some people might pay more tax, if lets say your area develops into a dense city core over 40 years your land will now be worth many millions, at that point your tax would be comparable to the skyscrapers around you. Which is reasonable since you are hurting the progress of the city at that point, and if you sell your property you will have so much money that you can easily move slightly outside the boundaries of the city core. But in most cases you wont strike it rich with your land getting worth that much.

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This doesn't make sense. The higher the tax the more the (negative) incentive. Low tax means low incentive.

Let's say someone has a house in a gentrifying area. The house isn't taxed but the land is, and property values are rising. Encouraging density means making it financially difficult for them to stay there, so they will sell to a developer. If the tax doesn't do that, LVT doesn't provide enough incentive to discourage speculation.

LVT advocates need to own up to what they're trying to do. There will be winners and losers. Someone with little income (retired) and property in a desirable location is going to lose.

And this is exactly the sort of thing that got Prop 13 passed in California. Homeowners really don't like it when their property tax goes up.

For most people the taxes would stay the same. It would increase the tax for some and reduce the tax for others, there is no reason to increase the tax overall.

Can even keep prop 13, the important part is that improving the land shouldn't increase your tax as that discourages building things and encourages wasteful usage of that land like huge parking lots for a tiny shop etc. Land value tax would force those companies to sell or actually use it better, which is a good thing, they can't just sit on mostly unimproved land hoping the value goes up with time while paying almost nothing.

> Someone with little income (retired) and property in a desirable location is going to lose.

Most advocates of a higher LVT also advocate for a provision to defer the payment of the tax until sale of the property for pensioners.

LVT isn't meant to evict anyone, it is meant to make it cheaper to use less land and more expensive to use more land. It is like an energy efficiency policy. We aren't forcibly trashing old cars. Even a modest LVT can prevent speculation because empty plots are no longer untaxed due to low property values.

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