We need to replace all taxes with a land value tax

Nope. If government tries to collect more land tax than what is offered by the market then the land goes idle (without owner) and revenue falls. Government would learn in short order to keep land taxes affordable to the market.

 

I own about 100 acres, and the land tax does not scare me. Like all other prominent land value tax advocates, I also support a land value tax exemption or equivalent citizens dividend, which would ensure that every individual receive some land USE for free. Like yourself I am starting a small farm operation.

 

Under a land value tax system, most land (especially land without fixed improvements) would only be held by someone who uses the land directly or plans to do so in the near future.

 

Those taxes you advocate burden the economy. They increase consumer prices and low real wages, the land value tax does not.

 

Mainly by comparison with similar properties. This should be checked against income and the value of improvements, but they are also basically comparisons

 

No government entity should ever be funded by a single revenue or tax source. In this case it is too much of a burden placed on land values. When they plummet due to recession so will all the revenue. Now that is going to happen if all your revenue comes for a value added tax, or an income tax or various sin taxes, gas taxes, inheritance taxes etc as well as the recession moves through different economic stages, but if revenue comes from different sources, at different stages in the economic process it happen slower, its impacts will be gradual. That is very important when you are dealing with annual and bi-annual budgets and forecasting. The more complex the machinery the slower to grind to stop, and the slower to get moving. It bides us time. Otherwise we are all standing on one leg with no crutch, just begging for the knee to give out.

 

Actually, replacing current taxes with a land value tax is suppose make the business cycle (as it exists today) something you read about in the history books. That is why so many of the greatest economists support the land tax. Furthermore, land values are a surplus and that means they cannot be burdened. Land value taxation is the only burdenless tax.

 

A purely land value tax will not work and it will create new tax schemes to avoid the taxation policies.

One problem you will have to deal with is intangible property and its valuation. It is already complicated, especially for estate tax, as well as valuating the intangilble property when the transaction is not at arms length. Neither GAAP nor IFRS has any good model for valuation, but IFRS does seeom to have a more applicable approach for its goodwill testing methodology.

Unfortuneately, the best tax system, both in terms of fainess and simplicity, is the taxation of income, not property valuation.

 

You just made that up … and you could have more accurately said that about any other tax scheme.

That is not a problem. Insurance companies and local governments are already assessing the value of land. All the landowner has to do is pay the tax in order to continue receiving the privilege. Land value taxation is the simplest tax the government can use.

Beneficial government spending makes nearby land more productive or desirable. It is landowners who benefit financially from government spending, so it is completely fair that they alone pay for that spending. Income taxes are just a dishonest scheme to transfer wealth from productive workers to those who own the land near where the government spending occurs. That is why working people stay poor and idle landowners get richer.

 

I am sorry, Intangible property means goodwill, patents, copyrights, and so forth. Their valuation methods are not the same as land.

Second. land is taxed differently depending on the nature and use of the land. Agricultural land has a different assessed value and tax rate than residential or commercial property, Commercial property has a different valueation rate and assessed value than residential land. It is not as simple as you think.

Third, land taxation is regressive in nature. Thus lower valued property will have a higher tax incidence than a higher vvalue property. As such, the rate of land ownership will continue to gradually go down if wages continue to be suppressed.

 

Taxing tangible items is a subjective exercise in relative value and thus subject to manipulation making any such scheme completely worthless concerning equity, morality or ethics.

If the goal is to raise revenue from the economy in a morally and ethically fair manner that precludes subjective discrimination, the only way to do that is to treat and tax all economic benefit the same. The best method available to discern economic benefit is by tracking economic activity. The best way to gain revenue from an economy is to tax economic activity. The way to do that in a morally ethically fair and non discriminatory manner is through a universal transaction tax.

Taxing the passive ownership of subjectively valued economic assets like land does not capture revenue directly from economic activity. This abstraction generates distortions in the economic behaviour of all participants, skewing the economy.

But perhaps... that is the goal.

 

It does wonders for revitalizing run down areas and cities.

 

Assessors use a mass appraisal process. In order to get a professional opinion of value for a particular property, one should hire a State licensed/certified residential appraiser. Private licensed/certified appraisers are often used in tax appeals.

 

True, the valuation method for these items would entail hiring a licensed/certified appraiser specializing in personal property.

Yes, tax rates can be different for different kinds, uses of property depending on the local zoning authority.

Vacant land is best appraised using local market data of like properties. Land with legally attached improvements (septic, well, sewer, water meter, sewage connection, dwelling, etc.) could have regressive taxation however as land with improvements (especially single family residences) typically have unusable (surplus) land, it is very difficult to place a value on just the land. Assessors may take a percentage of the overall value and assign it to the land.

Wages may have an effect on land value as IF they are sustained for a time and the market adjusts to borrowers with less ability to repay loans. Government 'low income' loans and FHA also influence a market.

 

I already pay property taxes, I'll pass on paying more.

 

Seems to me the result of moving to a land value tax would be to make land ownership untenable except for the very wealthy. Or are you going to exclude things like family farms, private residences, small business properties, etc.

 

When I bought my property I hired a State Certified Appraiser. He could not come up with comperables and ended up asking me what I wanted the land appraised for and then proceeded to write a very lengthy document justifying the price I wanted to pay.

 

Appraisers are prohibited from giving anything but a 100% objective opinion of value. Appraisers are not supposed to 'rubber stamp' a value. That being said, without seeing the appraiser's actual report one cannot make that determination. I would suggest that if you have any question as to the validity of that appraisal report (document), contact your state appraisal board. An objective review of that report could be done.

 

The whole appraisal process is nothing but a bad joke. I have lived all over the US and there is nothing normal or standard or objective about the appraisal of land values anywhere. Regardless of the process, the law, the rules regarding the status of appraisers and their qualifications it is the most arbitrary and subjective way to establish the value of anything that I have ever seen anywhere, including the time I watched as someone sold a plastic coat hanger for $5 in the parking lot at a Grateful Dead show.

 

This is the most ludicrous thing I have seen in quite some time. It is a claim of slavery, that another has some claim on something not belonging to them. That is the sum total of all that is wrong with this country today.

You have no right to rob me therefore you cannot delegate something you don't have. What part of Article 1, Section 1 do you not understand, "All legislative Powers herein granted..."? Congress nor state legislatures have no powers not granted by the people and you can't grant what you do not have.

It's not that I am surprised by the idiocy of the masses, just at the increasing size of the ignorant masses.

 

So that would make you the land god, able to determine how another may use his possession. You would have a little group of slave masters to make sure each of the slaves meet your demands.

Authority, an illusion of a diseased psyche, based entirely in violence and built upon the erroneous and dogmatic belief that some people are masters who have the moral right to issue commands, and others are slaves who have a moral obligation to obey the masters.

Looking at our current system,

Statism, the brilliant idea that we give a small group of people the right to kidnap, imprison, harass, steal from and kill people, so that we can be protected from people who kidnap, harass, steal and kill people.

A statist is an individual who erroneously believes that there is such a thing as "authority" vested in certain human beings magically giving them the "right to rule" over other people. This "authority" means that certain people who we call "government", have the "moral right" to issue commands to those whom they rule (those under their "jurisdiction"), and that their "subjects" (slaves) have a "moral obligation" to obey the arbitrary dictates set by their masters. Most simply put, a statist is someone who believes in the legitimacy of slavery.

So tell me how your system would be any different from what we already have? Stealing by one methodology or stealing by another methodology, it's still theft.

 

You mean one of those guys that bow to some implied standard by our servants as a condition to get a license to profit from this agreement?

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