Comment by _rm

This article is a frustrating read because it appears the author has not researched the history of taxation much before writing it.

It reads like someone saying that cooking with fire is an absurd idea that's never going to work, and we should stick to microwaves.

Again, LVT is one of the oldest and most widely historically practiced forms of tax, through various forms like taking a cut of rice produced through to levying corvee.

Valuation is also a straightforward issue: you have the landowners self-assess value, but that value also acts as an option for the state to buy at that price. This bakes in honesty and market price based accuracy.

As for the "not enough" argument, maybe it's not enough for a government looking to squeeze every last drop and piss it away, which appears the norm sadly. But the point is that all economic activity a state has the right and ability to tax happens on its land, and in the process raises the market value of that land. So all economic output is taxable indirectly via it.

On the claimed disincentive to improve land value, like the oil discovery example: where the value is based on market price, no one is harmed by an increase in their properties value. They can just sell it to an oil developer if they don't want to develop it themselves, and walk away with a fat untaxed capital gain. This is simply a non-issue, on par with someone worrying their salary raise will increase their taxes - missing the point that it's a nice problem to have.

And if they just hated the idea of having more money, they could just self-assess at the old price and have the state take on the burden of developing it if they think it's worth more.

The only actual issue and complexity with LVT is a political one - how to move from the current farce to that. Similar issue with gold standard etc. These systems are tried and true and obviously better, but not to certain powerful minority interests, who benefit from farces continuing.