7 votes

Non-glamorous gains: The Pennsylvania land tax experiment

5 comments

  1. skybrian
    Link
    From the article: Also:

    From the article:

    Because LVT is a local policy, a room full of citizens often figures out what LVT means in a few minutes. They know how things work, after all, under a conventional property tax:

    Q: What happens when you fix your house up?

    A: My taxes go up.

    Q: What happens when the shabby absentee-owned rental property across the street finally falls over or burns down?

    A: Its tax bill is reduced dramatically.

    Q: So why does the city overtax work and investment, and reward blight?

    A: Because that’s the way it’s always been.

    Many cities already make a regular practice of offering tax subsidies and abatements to prospective investors and builders. LVT simply extends this across the board to universally cover all buildings and improvements, new or old. With a simple change in the annual property tax ordinance, taxation of structures is permanently decreased, and moreover, it applies to everyone. No applications, no forms to fill out, and no golf games at the country club to get the tax break.

    Also:

    Buildings use infrastructure; vacant lots do not. LVT ramps up the use of existing infrastructure, a century-old asset that literally creates value from the ground up.

    3 votes
  2. [4]
    skybrian
    Link
    It seems like this policy would work well for unglamorous places that are worried about abandoned buildings, a declining tax base, and urban blight. But it's unlikely to be popular in places that...

    It seems like this policy would work well for unglamorous places that are worried about abandoned buildings, a declining tax base, and urban blight. But it's unlikely to be popular in places that are trying to prevent gentrification?

    1. [3]
      NaraVara
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Eh. Preventing gentrification by constraining the supply of housing is a futile effort. It only worsens the problem by making housing and amenities more dear. The gentrification problem is an...

      Eh. Preventing gentrification by constraining the supply of housing is a futile effort. It only worsens the problem by making housing and amenities more dear. The gentrification problem is an inequality problem and you can’t fix it by making housing or urbanism more scarce, since that just gives the people with more resources in an unequal society more ability to bid prices up.

      3 votes
      1. skybrian
        Link Parent
        Oh, I agree, but I think there are many who wouldn't.

        Oh, I agree, but I think there are many who wouldn't.

        1 vote
      2. bloup
        Link Parent
        A land value tax does not constrain the supply of housing and introduces no market distortions. It's one of the many reasons why Milton Friedman described it as "the least bad tax". If anything,...

        A land value tax does not constrain the supply of housing and introduces no market distortions. It's one of the many reasons why Milton Friedman described it as "the least bad tax". If anything, housing is scarce because we don't have a land value tax and we reward absentee land ownership like the article describes which encourages hoarding of a scarce, non-renewable resource (the land).

        1 vote