Re: Land tax (Re: better tax code: no income tax, head tax (&| ppty t)

RogerDodger <none@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 01:41:25 +0100, ask@xxxxxx (PeterBP) wrote:

RogerDodger <none@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rent for
improvements to real estate goes under the table, or is sharply
reduced in back-room deals (I slash your rent, you hire my wife for a
no-show job, etc.)

Roger,

your post has some good points, but here you confuse the common-parlance
rent (such as that for monthly tenure in a flat) with economic rent, and
specifically the land rent.

Land rent is not easy to hide.

Sure it is. It's quite easy to hide.

Land is difficult to hide. Buildings are even more difficult to hide.

It's the other way around. Buildings are difficult to hide, land is
impossible to hide.

TBH, i've never walked around and then seen and transparent patches in
the landscape where are supposed to be slots of land. The land seems to
still be there for some reason.

But building rent is easy to hide. If high taxes or rent controls are
imposed on it, building owners just take rent another way -- under-
the-table payments, traded favors, contractual arrangments under which
rent received is reduced but income received for other services
provided is increased, etc., etc.

And again, its not the kind of rent I'm discussing.


We all know this.

Land rent is even *easier* to hide. All the same options exist as with
building rent *plus* the extra option of allocating the bulk of the
value of real estate to the buildings on it and away from the land.

Are trades in land public or not? How do you bid on a plot of land
otherwise?

snip


That is one of the strengths of the land taxation idea.

More like it is quicksand upon which the Gerogists' church is built
... unless they can explain how land values can be successfully hidden
today when they can't be in their scheme.

Then please explain the positive outcome of cities and states where land
taxation in some form, has been enacted? The examples are few, but you
can't just sweep them off the table. How about Pittsburgh, with the
cheapest housing and some of the highest imporovement values in the US,
by far?


This even though their own sources like their "Geolibertarian FAQ"
claim property assessment is *easy* and will be done under a Single
Tax scheme just exactly like it's done now!

Where in the world today is there a Single Tax in action? DO tell.

snip


--
regards , Peter B. P. http://macplanet.dk
Washington D.C.: District of Criminals

"I dont drink anymore... of course, i don't drink any less, either!
.

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