Comment by adverbly
1 day ago
> I content that it is simply not possible to evaluate the "unimproved value" of a given parcel.
How familiar are you with existing property taxes?
It might surprise you that land value estimation is literally already happening at scale.
Also, you don't need to be 100% accurate with the estimation. Even a 50% lvt would be a huge improvement and would mean that you could literally be off by 100% which is extremely unlikely. How many houses do you see selling for twice the listing price?
Indeed. When I see these discussions, I am always struck by two things:
1) that many people don't seem to realize that a tax on land value is not novel, but is one of the oldest ways to fund government, with tons of experience behind it (past and present); and
2) that whatever the problems associated with figuring out land value, they pale in comparison to figuring out an individual's real income, which obviously didn't stop us from taxing that.
Right. So frustrating to hear people speak of LVT as some pie in the sky concept when it's the most original and basic form of tax, for centuries, worldwide.
It's equivalent to a modern day person talking about how cooking food over an open fire is never going to work.
The valuation issue is also a non-issue. You just have people self-assess the value, but any stated value is an option for the state to buy at that price. Also an ancient and well known mechanism.
But the difference is that assessing total property value can appeal to recent sales, so you have actual objective data to bound the realism of your assessment. What somebody would pay for the land without the improvement is stuck in imagination land.
We know construction costs so its not really hard to do without going to more imagination land than estimating property value.