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Comment by tobadzistsini | Hacker News Reader

Why don't they go back to their riff on land value tax? Property taxes are regressive and stifle growth, development, and improvements.

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Agreed as does the org putting out the linked paper https://www.prohousingpgh.org/blog/policy-land-value-taxes

And if you read the linked paper, particularly the section "Effects of Reassessments on Split-Rate Taxing Bodies" (split rate being the riff you're referring to), making land value assessments more accurate of course makes land value taxation more appealing.

Property taxes are the only thing that can redistribute wealth from landlords to the working people.

Your company definitely bought / financed it, so it is clear evidence of your financial means at the purchase time.

Businesses that own land don't pay federal taxes, they can just declare 0 profit every year while paying for range rovers for the owners.

Property taxes have a component that redistributes wealth from landlords to the working people, but it also has a component that penalizes making better use of the land. The former is usually called "land value tax" and the latter is the part of the tax that is proportional to the improved value of the land. The latter part incentivizes some uncertain amount more towards mcmansions and away from multi-unit buildings.

Property tax also encourages speculators to hold and trade underutilized parcels compared to land value tax. With property tax, the penalty for holding an empty parking lot in a dense urban center is much lower than under a land value tax system.

Oh this definitely needs extra tax in areas with limited supply. Unoccupied property ? 1% tax per month. Rent it or sell it.

That’s one approach, but then you get people playing with the system, adding a single apartment to the multimillion dollar lot, or the aforementioned parking lot (technically a business). The great thing about LVT is that it bypasses these shell games. The biggest weakness is that you have to fight off any attempt to seize control of the valuation process, and that is going to be difficult except in places with highly engaged and intelligent voters.

That is fair. Would business zoning help in this scenario and business specific property taxes?

It might, but it’s going to be politically difficult to navigate and maintain. The tradeoff of increasingly complex rules/taxes versus a straightforward (but you have to get valuation right) method like LVT is that complex tax schemes inevitably end up with loopholes or exceptions thanks to lobbying and political connections. In the rare cases where airtight rules are passed, those are often added later as “incentives” or other dealmaking. No free lunches in politics.

> Property taxes are the only thing that can redistribute wealth from landlords to the working people.

Eh? Working people always pay the property tax, landlords do not.

Landlords will just price rent at the maximum price the market can afford. Their costs are irrelevant.

Evidence: the free cash flow varies wildly per geography even in the same tax region.

Landlords will accept negative cash flow in expectation of property value increase.

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