Comment by bluecalm

Not a very convincing article in my view.

>>Take, for example, the case of surveying land for oil. Imagine a landowner invests significant time, money, and effort into exploring their property to determine whether it contains untapped oil reserves. If they do find oil, the value of their land would skyrocket because the presence of oil dramatically increases its economic potential.

Is the author aware that in many countries the owner of the land doesn't own the resources if they are discovered there? Is the author seriously claiming discovering oil is not profitable under LVT? Does he prefer making people who happen to stumble on oil not pay % of the value of it as tax? (and thus presumably prefers taxing other things). It seems so unlikely to me that someone reasonable would make that argument that I have trouble taking it seriously.

>>An LVT implicitly taxes improvements to nearby land

That's one of the two major points behind it: tax wealth that you got without building it yourself. In other words it limits land speculation.

>>An LVT is unlikely to replace many existing taxes

The argument the author is making here ("government will not get rid of other taxes") applies to any tax discussion and kills it before it even starts.

>>Another major issue is that a full or near-full land value tax would likely establish a troubling precedent by signaling that the government has the appetite to effectively confiscate an additional category of assets that people have already acquired long ago through their labor and purchases.

Yeah but we need to tax something. The alternative is to tax the very labor which must certainly be worse. Land owners are benefiting from work done by others without contributing to it and thus should be taxes accordingly.

>>The concern here—which, to be clear, is not unique to the LVT—is that the introduction of an LVT set at a high rate (especially near 100%)

Amazing, 100% rate for LVT doesn't make sense!

>>For instance, individuals buy stocks, businesses invest in capital goods like machinery, and developers improve real estate—all with the expectation that they will retain most of the value of their assets and any future returns from them. This confidence in the protection of property rights encourages entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth.

And yet all of those are taxed in the current system!

The author seems to be assuming the proposed LVT rates are very high (when in practice they would be in low single digits). Remove that assumption and the whole article makes no sense at all.