Comment by Aurornis

> I agree, but taxing real estate as an investment would break the wealth structure of many voters (and politicians) above the 80th percentile of wealth

Most places do tax real estate. I was surprised to look it up and find that Paris has some of the lowest property tax rates in the world.

Land Value Tax would be a little different, though. It's a proposal to replace most or all taxes with a simple tax on the estimated value of the land. One of the key features of LVT is that if land becomes valuable over time, the tax on that land becomes so high that the owner is forced to sell it. The idea is that the LVT ensures optimal usage of the land by forcing people who own land in valuable areas to use it for a business. So if you buy a house and the area becomes popular 10 years later, your tax bill might get so high that you have to sell it to a developer who will build a high-rise on it, or a grocery store that can afford the high tax rate.

It would never be accepted in practice when everyone's 70 year old parents were being forced to sell their modest forever homes. There's also a major problem where the structures aren't considered at all, so one person with a $2 million home living next to someone with a $200,000 100-year old home would pay the same tax rate if they're on the same size lot, because it only cares about the value of the land.

I don't know why Land Value Tax has become the default solution to everything on the internet, because I think most people would actually hate what it did to society. Having progressive taxes that scale with people's income, spending, and size of their home is good for making the tax burden proportional to wealth and consumption. Replacing it all with a tax that just taxes how much your property is worth ignores everything except the value of your land, which is completely out of your control over several decades of life as the world changes around you.