Comment by quantified
1 day ago
I lose confidence in the writing early on when it says this: > Instead, the government essentially "seizes" the added value by taxing its rental value away, eliminating the incentive to discover the oil in the first place.
If the tax is 100% of the value, sure. But left unstated is whether taxes are 100% of value. If taxes are 100% of value, there is no incentive to own the land in the first place, my $400,000 house costs me $400,000 in land tax to own... yearly?
My biggest criticism of LVT is that the name is confusing :)
The idea is that you're taxing 100% of land rents, not 100% of the total value. So if there's a 5% cap rate on your property, and the land value is $300k, then the annual tax bill would be $15k.
Yes, it's a straw man argument. It may be possible to tax the rental value away, but in practice, no jurisdiction levies a rate that high, because the officials that enacted it would be thrown out of office in the next election. It certainly shouldn't be presumed the standard case. It's like saying we shouldn't use electricity because it's possible to be electrocuted.