this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Sounds like it could have a lot of loopholes like any tax scheme but as long as those are addressed, this looks like a reasonable proposal.
That's actually the beauty of LVT -- the government already knows who owns what land (the landowner has the deed), and land can't be hidden or offshored. You may try having shell companies, but the tax bill comes due regardless. The reason shell companies work for avoiding other taxes is because they can allow you to offshore your on-paper profits to tax havens. LVT doesn't tax you on profits, so it doesn't matter where the profits are on paper. Similar for income or sales taxes, income and sales can be done cash-only and hidden.
To somebody else’s point, how would this compare to the what single family home owners pay now?
Where I live we have about .09 acres of land our house sits on and we pay ~$3000/year.
You might live in a place which already has some form of land value tax. Although a key distinction is that LVT is a tax on just the value of the land, not the value of the entire property that includes buildings, landscaping, ect. ...
It really depends on where the land is as it's based on value. If you are talking about replacing property taxes with land value taxes typically it's just a rate on the value but in this case it's just the land value so a higher rate but only applies to land. If you could figure out the total land value in your neighbourhood you could figure it out.
As for who is affected, single family homes on the outskirts probably see a drop in taxes while those in the inner city and vacant plots see a large increase.
So it disincentivizes living in an urban setting an penalized fixed income people already in those homes?
Not necessarily the first as long as it's done in land efficient way and the second if they are unwilling to move but otherwise yes.
Oh boy! I guess I see why people are against it. Probably should come up with a better plan.
Yeah you aren't wrong there. Figuring our a way to placated those groups is required to get it to be implemented.
The people who will be impacted first will be people who own vacant lots and parking lots in and around downtowns. If you're concerned about people getting booted out of their homes, consider Estonia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
In general, LVT should increase overall housing supply, improve affordability, and can be used to reduce other taxes such as property, income, and sales taxes. Most serious proposals I have seen have been to replace property taxes with LVT. These factors should make it easier on average households generally, and also allow them more flexibility to downsize (once your kids have moved out, do you really need a jumbo house all to yourself?), rather than locking you into the only place you can afford.
That was one concern. Another is our specific situation. Our foundation square footage is 972, our lot is 3,991 in total, none of it yard, half is all wild growth and weed trees, the rest is clover we planted to replace the grass and support pollinators. Our property tax is $3,750 this year, our land value is $46,400. I understand the calculation would be different on LVT but if I’d end up paying more on an LVT scheme then I wouldn’t want to have it in place.
I’d be more in favor if the county determined it’s annual budget costs and then divided that by the total acreage of privately owned land and you paid the percentage equal to your total land value.
I may be misunderstanding but it reads like .09 acres I have may be assessed as more valuable because of where it is than .09 acres 20 miles away in Tre same state and county.