Comment by Aurornis
1 day ago
> Primary residences pay a lower % of the value than 2nd and 3rd homes.
I think it's funny how every LVT discussion eventually comes back to some inclusion of other factors to adjust the taxes or provide exemptions, which starts to defeat the claimed purpose of a Land Value Tax.
LVT is a concept that sounds amazing and novel in a vacuum, but starts to look less ideal in the real world. The people who think about it enough start to include factors like structure value and different exceptions for how the land is being used, which starts to look a lot like existing tax code in most places.
> which starts to defeat the claimed purpose of a Land Value Tax.
What do you think others claim the purpose of an LVT is?
> every LVT discussion eventually comes back to some inclusion of other factors to adjust the taxes or provide exemptions
This argument seems only to follow from a belief that carving exceptions out of policy here is either: inherently bad, lends to a slippery slope towards badness, or is fundamentally incompatible with the professed aims of an LVT (hence my asking).
I don't believe any of those are true, so this sounds to me an unfair indictment against the otherwise legitimate strategy of "keep what's good; change what's bad", which is practical and works for other policy all the time. While I'd scorn the complexity of our current tax code, I wouldn't do so on principle of exemptions being bad, but rather that we've made poor tradeoffs or struck a bad balance.
LVT sounds really smart when you exclusively talk about car parks in downtown NYC or whatever, it's not actually a good tax framework as soon as the conversation shifts from talking about low perceived social value commercial endeavors.