Property tax doesn't adequately tax the value of the land. That's the whole point. This was a vacant, unbuilt lot in the heart of New York City. For ~thirty years. That shouldn't even be a thing ever.
Currently the building pays about 20M/yr in property tax. Having a vacant lot there for three decades is many millions in property tax that the city never recieved.
As you've said, you wish to have a higher tax on land. That is very reasonable, and a policy position that one could examine within the established context of our property tax regime.
> Property tax doesn't adequately tax the value of the land. That's the whole point. This was a vacant, unbuilt lot in the heart of New York City. For ~thirty years. That shouldn't even be a thing ever.
No tax will prevent this behavior if the final benefit to the owner is high enough.
How would a land value tax on three adjacent parcels stop an investor from waiting 30 years for the chance to combine the parcels and unlock far greater value?
Well, naturally. But a speculative bet that a un-/under-developed piece of land will become vastly more valuable in 30 years looks less and less appealing the more the owner is taxed on the value of the land itself, vs. the value of the improvements upon it, which for a undeveloped parcel is by definition very low.
I don't know the specifics for NYC, but I do know that there is effectively no jurisdiction within the US that even comes close to a full LVT as imagined by Henry George.
The goal isn't to stop a developer from combining parcels, or whatever their development objective is — LVT changes the calculus on speculative investments, and hopefully benefiting tax payers as well.
If a developer wants to sit on a parcels for 3 decades, they're still able to do so but they'll also need to pay up for keeping high-value land vacant. That money can then be reinvested into the community.
How is that different from what happens now?
It sounds like what you are saying is that you don't believe that property taxes are high enough since there exist vacant buildings.
That is a fine thing to believe but there is nothing about the current structure of property taxes that goes against this, in principle, besides the tax rate.
If the current structure isn't providing that, then perhaps LVT is the way to go over our current structure. If it turns out LTV didn't provide the desired outcomes, then let's try something else!
The current status quo of letting developers speculate endlessly while holding back growth or even providing negative economic externalities doesn't seem to be working as well as it could be.
All of this has nothing to do with a land value tax; instead, some people believe that cities should not allow vacant properties. This is a fine opinion, but it does not need to invoke a 100 year-old theory on taxation