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Comment by somnic | Hacker News Reader

Someone getting forced out of their home in exchange for a few million dollars isn't exactly the most tragic story out there, and increasing tax revenue to pay for better amenities is hardly a bad thing by my reckoning. The aforementioned rich people are a bit less richer, because now they're paying those rates.

Most plans to implement LVT at scale that I've seen include provisions to increase the rate slowly over years and decades, and allow deferred payments for the elderly upon sale or from their estate because yeah, a lot of people made plans to retire based on the present tax regime. Younger people saving for retirement can plan on putting retirement savings into productive assets rather than land speculation. I'm also not entirely clear on why a pension that pays for everything except housing is fine, but providing housing for the elderly is a problematic level of state intervention.

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For me, the difference is choice. An elderly person voluntarily accepting a multi-million dollar buyout is a wildly positive story (as would any other voluntary conclusion).

It’s the involuntary “beat it, Grandma!” that people find objectionable.

I wonder if a scheme where you could "lock in your rates" would work. Instead of just waiting for reassessment or whatever and having no way to know how it will increase in the future or hoping it stays the same for a long time, maybe you could agree to a X% yearly increase and pick how many years. So you lock in 2% increase for the next 20 years. This could be especially nice for the elderly and allow a compromise for tax revenue. Each property owner gets to decide whether to hedge or not. (This would just be for non commercial properties only.) This is just a hair brain idea off the cuff, just thinking out loud.

Perhaps land ownership could be renewed on different time bases, where the longer deeds have higher taxes? For example, you could own a property for 1 year at a lower rate or 10 years at a slightly higher rate, and 20 years at an even higher rate.

This would allow you to pay a premium for a more stable tax rate. Perhaps you could accomplish this in the private sector through some type of "property tax insurance"?

This is a more reasonable version of California's Prop 13.

A fairer system would be to allow unaffordable property taxes to be deferred indefinitely, while accruing fair interest, with the property as the collateral. "Unaffordable" would be means tested. When the owner dies or sells the property, the remaining property tax is paid from the sale of the property. This creates the possibility of properties being underwater, however, so there would have to be provisions to call in the property if the ratio gets too bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

>Someone getting forced out of their home in exchange for a few million dollars isn't exactly the most tragic story out there

Separating someone from the place they had all their kids because they cant afford the tax is pretty bad. Especially when the property hasn't gotten any better. People shouldnt be at the mercy of subjective, third party evaluations of their wealth. This is why progressive taxation waits until gains are realised.

>Most plans to implement LVT at scale that I've seen include provisions to increase the rate slowly over years and decades

Never seen this, I always see Georgists lamenting home owners whose land has increased in value as evil and deserving.

>providing housing for the elderly is a problematic level of state intervention.

Providing housing for the elderly is fine. But if they are already self sufficient, forcing them into alternate housing is disgusting.

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