yumbaya

It’s good they’re trying to match market value. They come up with that assessment by assessing the land value, and the structure value, and adding them together. But they are still taxing improvements at the same rate as the land. Sure, land value can rise and become a greater portion of the total market value. But this is still conventional property taxation.

In a pure LVT system the structure should play no part. The landowner should be free to build whatever they want on their land without such building causing a change to their taxes. A partial step towards LVT would be a “split rate” system, where the value of the land is taxed at a higher rate, say 5%, than the value of the structures, which could be 0.5%.

Pennsylvania is the example case here in the US:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-g...

Conventional property taxes already cause tax foreclosures on homes. This was a big problem in Detroit, where structures were systematically overvalued, forcing a lot of people out of their homes. Land-only assessments are arguably much easier to pull off than land-plus-house assessments.

LVT concentrates development efficiently. It would actually increase green space, since people wouldn’t have to develop sprawling exurbs to escape high rents (too little housing) in the city center. So no, LVT would produce significant quality of life improvements over what we have now.

Texas is not Georgist. Property tax is assessed on the full market value of property, not on land. And Texas’s land speculation and sprawling, inefficient land use reflects this.

LVT would remove the disincentive to develop housing, so cost of living would drop as more is built. Even if a homeowner couldn’t keep up with the land tax, they’d be much more likely to be able to find housing in the same area.

Compare to right now, where every generation can’t afford to live in their own hometown, because there’s only upwards pressure on housing costs, so families and support networks are constantly being torn apart.

It’s system length that’s the bigger cost. If people are disincentivized from developing land, then the result is sprawl, with far greater infrastructure costs due to the enormous system lengths. Same goes for road costs, police, fire, schools, etc.