6 ms·

Sounds nice but the devil is in the details. Land value tax would be determined arbitrarily not by the market. It’s sounds great if you ignore the problem of ac

Sounds nice but the devil is in the details. Land value tax would be determined arbitrarily not by the market. It’s sounds great if you ignore the problem of actually assessing unimproved land value. Of course we know “value” is just the amount of money someone traded for something, so Georgism can’t be implemented practically. When you stop thinking about how awesome LVT is and think about how to calculate it, the whole theory falls apart.

rcpt 7y ago
This sounds like an argument to abolish all property taxes. No? Land value assessments should be easier than typical property assessments (which take into account land value already), cf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Assessment/appraisal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Assessment/ap...
- simplecomplex 7y ago
  Pretty much. An assessor can write down any assessment they want. All assessed value taxes have this problem. The value I attribute to something can only be objectively defined by a market transaction. And more importantly, people attribute different values to the same thing. This is simple to illustrate by example: Three people are willing to buy the same property at different maximum prices. Person A is willing to buy at $35k, person B at $30k, and person C at $25k. Any value an assessor writes down will necessarily be different than one of the three people. There is no dollar value intrinsic to the property itself.
  - rcpt 7y ago
    So, because land value assessments are easier than property assessments, we should get a smaller margin of error by switching to a LVT. This is good. Your other point seems to be that no margin of error is acceptable and we should therefore ditch the whole thing. It's not clear that the societal pain from somewhat inaccurate tax assessments is great enough that we should just set everything to 0. We have lots of data that 0 property tax leads to housing shortages and rampant speculation (cf. Malta for an example) and if you don't tax land ownership you often end up taxing something productive, like income.
    - simplecomplex 7y ago
      Margin of error? I don’t think you understand me. There can’t be a margin of error because there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything). Margin of error compared to what? People attribute different values to the same property, which is not reflected in any sort of assessed value. I’ll explain with a question: If I say a property is worth $30k and you say it’s worth $100k what should the assessed value be?
      - rcpt 7y ago
        > there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything) There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". I'm not very familiar with finance so I'm not sure if this is what you you're getting at. But your idea, that land can't be taxed because it has no value, can't possibly be new as these questions have been around for literally hundreds of years. That being said, I've never heard it before and would be genuinely interested if you can link some papers or books.
        simplecomplex 7y ago
        > There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". If there is, then how would I calculate the intrinsic value of a piece of real estate, to levy a tax on it? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

rcpt 7y ago

This sounds like an argument to abolish all property taxes. No? Land value assessments should be easier than typical property assessments (which take into account land value already), cf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Assessment/appraisal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax#Assessment/ap...

simplecomplex 7y ago
Pretty much. An assessor can write down any assessment they want. All assessed value taxes have this problem. The value I attribute to something can only be objectively defined by a market transaction. And more importantly, people attribute different values to the same thing. This is simple to illustrate by example: Three people are willing to buy the same property at different maximum prices. Person A is willing to buy at $35k, person B at $30k, and person C at $25k. Any value an assessor writes down will necessarily be different than one of the three people. There is no dollar value intrinsic to the property itself.
- rcpt 7y ago
  So, because land value assessments are easier than property assessments, we should get a smaller margin of error by switching to a LVT. This is good. Your other point seems to be that no margin of error is acceptable and we should therefore ditch the whole thing. It's not clear that the societal pain from somewhat inaccurate tax assessments is great enough that we should just set everything to 0. We have lots of data that 0 property tax leads to housing shortages and rampant speculation (cf. Malta for an example) and if you don't tax land ownership you often end up taxing something productive, like income.
  - simplecomplex 7y ago
    Margin of error? I don’t think you understand me. There can’t be a margin of error because there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything). Margin of error compared to what? People attribute different values to the same property, which is not reflected in any sort of assessed value. I’ll explain with a question: If I say a property is worth $30k and you say it’s worth $100k what should the assessed value be?
    - rcpt 7y ago
      > there is no dollar value inherent to land (or anything) There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". I'm not very familiar with finance so I'm not sure if this is what you you're getting at. But your idea, that land can't be taxed because it has no value, can't possibly be new as these questions have been around for literally hundreds of years. That being said, I've never heard it before and would be genuinely interested if you can link some papers or books.
      - simplecomplex 7y ago
        > There's "intrinsic value" which is different from the "market value". If there is, then how would I calculate the intrinsic value of a piece of real estate, to levy a tax on it? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsic_theory_of_value vs https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value