The Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis | Hacker News Reader

The Tax That Could Solve the Housing Crisis

bloomberg.com

16 pointsonesafari13 comments

I always link people unfamiliar with Land Value Tax to this book review of Progress and Poverty, the book which put the concept of a Land Value Tax on the map.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

It's thorough, informative, and surprisingly funny for a book review.

This article is covered by the Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast from 2022-06-13.

Land Value Taxation, as opposed to property taxes. I didn’t quite understand the distinction.

Simply put, Land value tax is a tax on the unimproved value of land. It also can be thought of as _location_ value tax. Property tax typically includes both land value tax and the value of the improvements to the land - buildings, etc.

While they may sound similar, land value tax and property tax lead to vastly different outcomes.

Check out this Strong Towns video for an explanation about both taxes and how they differ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok2uR3btMrE

The problem with such a tax is the same problem all other taxes and businesses that do not properly align their incentives have.

Ultimately the ones paying are not the ones making the decisions.

I'm all for a land area tax, but such a tax must necessarily come with political reforms to ensure the proceeds of said tax are used in the manner that the payer of the tax decides.

In other words, people don't vote, land does.

Ceding political and budgetary power to wealthier portion of citizens does not seem like a good way to maintain a healthy society. Even the poor deserve a say in how they will be governed, and where collected taxes will go.

$290/yr subscription fee in order to read an opinion article? How does one get the webarchive link?

https://archive.ph/WZiZf

archive.is - might redirect but it's fine.

Look for archived in second field but if not, use the first field which will process all the resources and assemble them.

https://archive.ph/WZiZf

Encourage companies to pay a dividend and stop stock buy backs and housing prices will come down.

That wouldn't impact housing prices. From shareholder standpoint, there isn't much difference between dividends and stock buybacks. Stock buybacks can potentially reduce tax liability for some shareholders.

They're the same thing

Basically a blue state problem. Maybe they should look at what red states do?

The benefits of a LVT go beyond inner city housing issues though. Of the top ten states with the highest poverty rates in the US - nine are red. If you're unfortunate enough to be part of the (one in five!) impoverished residents of Mississippi you want to see property taxes reduced and undeveloped land decentivized because every dollar saved in pursuit of affordable housing stretches further.

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