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Comment by knownjorbist | Hacker News Reader

Would've been better to just implement a land value tax.

To avoid the problem of the tax just being passed on to renters, you would presumably make the tax "progressive" (i.e. marginal), or only apply after a certain threshold, right?

I think that one mathematically appealing structure for such a tax is to work out what the median (inhabited, primary) property size is (including garden etc.) and set that as the tax-free threshold. Any land tax paid by the top half can then be distributed to those in the lower half.

This would be similar to (and is based on the same logic as) Thomas Paine's proposal for what we would now call a Universal Basic Income.

https://basicincometoday.com/thomas-paines-centuries-old-arg...

How would this be any different to what we have now (a property tax)?

A land value tax targets the land only, not the structures on top of it, so nobody is penalized for improving their property. It also means that within an expensive metro vacant lots are taxed at the same rate as dense residential buildings, making land speculation unprofitable. Rather, landowners are incentivized to either put their land to productive use or sell to somebody else who can.

Well for one, it would be higher than low < 1% tax rates that exist now. That is just asking for foreign investors. And it would be based on the the land value, not the property (house) value.

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