Land Value Tax: Tax The Land, Share The Wealth

[aaron38]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Just for the record, that's rarely the case. Take, for example, San Francisco. It's trying to increase zoning but can only go so far. It was a public revolt (resulting in ballot initiatives blocking any increase which CA law allows) that has stopped attempt after attempt to increase zoning since the 1960s, starting with a reaction to the first post-war high rise boom of that era.

Well yeah. California gave the people massive amounts of power over their neighbors. Why would they give it up now?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by BrownTown

So in other words the city refuses to increase zoning..

The city GOVERNMENT is trying to increase zoning. A few of its citizens--typically those who perceive an adverse effect on themselves as individuals--use the inordinate power the state laws give them to block it. In the courts they often lose. Then they go to the ballot and ill-informed voters too often favor their initiatives. You can call this an action of the "city" but that's pretty meaningless IMHO. What most people don't want is more traffic, more crowded busses etc. They don't really go into the issues further than that.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

Land Value tax wouldn't affect that as far as I understand, but instead affect people operating things like surface lots on prime land or leaving prime land vacant as an investment.

Actually, it's extremely simple to implement.

My hometown, a Canadian city of 200,000 where I own a bunch of real estate, which always had perfectly standard North American style property taxation, introduced an extra tax on unimproved lots a few years ago.

Among what I own are a few downtown surface parking lots, and they were hit by this tax rate increase. It's actually helping to push me towards considering building something (it would probably be a mixed use 6-story building) on the best located of my surface parkings - which is exactly the intent of this measure.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Pittsburgh is actually one of the largest cities in the country which experimented with a land tax rather than a property tax. It was finally scrapped in 2001 due to its horribly regressive, but it was in place for 100 or so years.

It's not regressive when done correctly.

Anyone who is sitting on land as an asset and can afford to let time pass and pass without doing anything with it is not poor.

And if they can't afford the extra tax, well, it's great as it will force them to sell to someone who'll develop the property.

Even if they can afford the extra tax, it may annoy them enough that they might end up developing it, while they previously didn't intend to. (That's almost my case.)

Originally Posted by aaron38

Seems to me that the issues of under-utilized land should be handled by zoning, not taxes.

Not at all. Zoning won't prevent people from continuing to sit on vacant land for speculative purposes.

[BrownTown]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

The city GOVERNMENT is trying to increase zoning. A few of its citizens--typically those who perceive an adverse effect on themselves as individuals--use the inordinate power the state laws give them to block it. In the courts they often lose. Then they go to the ballot and ill-informed voters too often favor their initiatives. You can call this an action of the "city" but that's pretty meaningless IMHO. What most people don't want is more traffic, more crowded busses etc. They don't really go into the issues further than that.

If a majority of voters say they don't want increased density then that sure seems like the city doesn't want increased density.