Land tax -- the Hudson/Gaffney challenge (Re: better tax code: no income tax, head tax (&| ppty t)


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

An assertion not only without evidence but directly contradicted by
logic, expert testimony and all human experience.

(1) Logic...

Why is it any harder to hide rent to land than to buildings or
anything else, when it is profitable to do so? It's even easier,
because land value can be and *is* shifted to buildings.

Why is it impossible to hide only rent to land? Please explain.

Georgists seem to think that by purportedly taxing "land" they
actually are taxing land itself -- but they are taxing only
contractual arrangements.

Why are contractual arrangements regarding land supposed to be more
difficult to obscure than any others?

(2) Expert testimony...

Hudson says 50% of land value is shifted away from land to other
things right now. Mason Gaffney, geeze, do I have to quote him on
this?

George Donatello, who managed the last Pittsburgh assessement that
collapsed the system with 170,000 appeals, said a big part of the
problem was that assessed land values going into it "were so low they
weren?t anywhere near reality. People in the past kept land values
low, artificially low, because of the way the tax rate was
structured.?

Hudson, Gaffney and Donatello of course are all big *pro* land tax.

You are saying they are all wrong?

If so, what mistake are they making?

(3) All human experience....

Whenever a power such as the state tries to confiscate the price to
sellers that sellers otherwise would command in a free market, a black
market, backroom deals, key money, under-the-table payments, favor
trades, etc. *always* result. You can't find any case *ever* where
they haven't.

The "wedge" between what is allowed to the seller under the rules and
what buyers are willing to actually pay creates both opportunity and
incentive to go outside the rules so both can benefit by splitting the
difference, sharing the wedge.

Why would this not happen with land in the future? And only in the
future, when it certainly has happened in the past!

I asked a question before -- let's now call it the Hudson/Gaffney/
Donatello challenge..

In light of the current tax disadvantage of value being attributed to
land, Hudson says land owners have succeeded in understating its value
by 50% and shifting this value to other things. As we know, Gaffney
and the Pittsburgh land assessor certainly agree in substance.

Question #1: Are they wrong? If no, then...

Question #2: How is the Georgist tax system going to remedy this???
What remedy do the Georgists have that they could offer the tax
asssessors who are missing 50% or so of land value today???

(And, of course, the tax cost of valuing land and incentive to move
its valye to other tax-free items will be hugely greater in Single Tax
Land than now.)

The answers I got when I asked before were...

* Today's tax collectors are DISHONEST, but Georgist tax collectors
will be honest. (Why? Because they will be genetically re-engineered?)

* The IRS and NYC tax assessors don't care if they don't collect tax
today. But Georgist tax collectors will care! (How come? They'll
attend motivational seminars??)

* <Snip> All reference to the issue deleted.

* Georgist tax assessors will use comparable sales! Unlike today's
tax collectors who use comparable sales. ;-)

C'mon -- you all know all these answers are entirely, um,
unimpressive.

Anyone want to take another shot at answering the challenge?


.

Relevant Pages

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