[dinp]

Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes. I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses. If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even. If desirable high value businesses aren't able to compete with car washes, isn't that the market doing it's thing? Introducing additional property and land value taxes might discourage low value businesses, but what are the 2nd and 3rd order effects of such a change?

[lmm]

> I don't understand the argument of designing a system to hurt a specific business type such as low value businesses.

The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space. If anything taxing space use makes more sense than taxing profits; a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well, whereas a business that takes up space and doesn't generate much profit is no good for anyone. From the article:

> “A car wash does not provide a lot of jobs for the community, and they take up a lot of space,” Broska said. “If you want to invest your dollars into a car wash, then God bless you. But at the same time, I’m responsible for 17,500 people and have to be cognizant of their wishes.”

> the largely automated facility wasn’t the best use for a prominent Main Street site

[bdjsiqoocwk]

> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well

This argument reminds of the argument googlers to explain why placing paid ads ahead of organic results is better for the user: they say thay if someone can pay more for an ad than means that can get more money from the user, and therefore the user likes it more. Lol

No, profit is profit, it doesn't mean anything else.

[Gormo]

> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum.

I'm not sure I follow the reasoning here. How does the existence of economic scarcity imply that it makes sense to tax anything?

> If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space.

But that's already inherent in the nature of scarcity -- the more demand there is for a scarce resource, the higher the price is. So businesses making use of high-value prime real estate are already paying more for it. The law of supply and demand already does what you are proposing. How does paying additional fees to a separate institution with its own perverse incentives add anything to the equation?

> the largely automated facility wasn’t the best use for a prominent Main Street site

This was the personal opinion of a local bureaucrat who thought his personal opinion should be policy. That's why the company is suing.

[OJFord]

> The argument is that good business spots are a limited community resource that it makes sense to tax, like radio spectrum. If you can make good use of the space you're taking up, go ahead, but you should compete fairly with other uses of the space.

If it's really such a prime desirable spot then that would drive up the value of the land to the point that the low value business wouldn't have been able to afford it?

I don't understand saying it's such valuable land and detaching that from what a business was actually able to pay for it.

[BenFranklin100]

To add to this, LVTs encourage more homes near job rich areas of the city. This in turn means more people can live nearby and have a shot at a job.

[kriops]

You can't just assert that it makes sense when answering why it makes sense. If you are right, then the owner is losing out on money by operating a car wash, which by the way is their moral and legal right. If you think you can provide more value with the same space – offer to buy it.

[brailsafe]

> a profitable business is probably one that's serving the community well, whereas a business that takes up space and doesn't generate much profit is no good for anyone.

I think that attributes a lot more to profitability than such a metric deserves. Perhaps in a more narrow and ruthlessly capitalistic sense profitability signifies that a business is doing what it's trying to do well, but it's a big leap to get from there to how well its serving whatever is considered to be a community these days. Among other problems, just because some tiny amount of that money conceivably stays around in the region and people can buy stuff does not mean that the cost of the business being there isn't quite a lot higher, hence the term tragedy of the commons and the hollowing out of let's say America

[KingMachiavelli]

The theory of (LVT) land value tax is that it replaces other taxes. LVT has less or no dead weight loss so it's a more efficient tax.

> If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even.

My claim is that the playing field is not currently even rather it is massively in favor for low-capital, low-labor, and low-regulatory businesses (like car washes) and additionally incentives ostensibly designed to encourage real estate development (1031 like-kind, treatment of real estate as depreciating, etc.) are now primarily used to either speculate on existing real estate or build the minimum to gain ownership/interest in speculation. If you take all the cash you have, you can only buy a finite amount of land. If you build a low-capital but profitable business like a car wash, you are only limited by the leverage limits imposed by lenders.

> If desirable high value businesses aren't able to compete with car washes, isn't that the market doing it's thing? > but what are the 2nd and 3rd order effects of such a change?

Tautology yes, as desired no. Technically yes because the market is shifting towards low-capital and low-regulatory businesses because they have a more predictable ROI. The goal isn't to disfavor the more capital & regular intensive businesses just regulate them. i.e the influx of car washes is the undesired 2nd order effect of some other policy e.g. minimum parking for restaurants and apartments (likely no such rule exists for car washes so now you need less land a car wash vs a restaurant).

Raising regular property taxes (land+improvements) is just easier solution than waiting for far-reaching tax reform like LVT. IMO it's better to correct the market even if it means raising taxes overall in the short term.

[presentation]

I like Georgism but if business taxes were replaced would internet businesses that don’t need a physical location thereby pay much less taxes than those that do have need for physical location? That does sound kinda lopsided, unless we’re also doing a land value tax on prime domain name real estate.

[mumbo_rmj]

> My claim is that the playing field is not currently even rather it is massively in favor for low-capital, low-labor, and low-regulatory businesses (like car washes)

The term ‘rent seekers’ comes to mind.

[Arainach]

>Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me

Eternal wealth to those lucky enough to have been born and bought in the past or born to families who bought in the past sounds plenty dystopian to me; pay up regularly or let someone else who will contribute to society step in.

[chrischen]

Exactly this. We all would love to be perpetual rent-seekers but it just doesn't work for a proper society. Not to mention land is a finite resource.

[Paul-Craft]

Which conflates "contribution to society" with "economic value."

[a_gnostic]

What eternal wealth would a guy in a hut in the middle of a land-locked forest have, with no infrastructure, and no community? Why is he forced to provide anything beyond self-sustainability?

> pay up regularly or let someone else who will contribute to society [raze your forest to sell wood chips].

Forcing mountain men off their land to work in the factories, sounds plenty dystopian to me. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race…

[TacticalCoder]

> Somehow the idea of perpetually paying property taxes and land value taxes doesn't sound appealing to me, especially since businesses already pay taxes.

And it doesn't sound appealing to me, as an individual. I don't want to feel like a peasant constantly paying a tax to the monarch/state: so at very least the first property an individual owns should be tax free (not annual land value tax / property tax). I happen to live in a country where that's the case (but it's not the reason I moved there): no yearly property tax.

[pjc50]

> I don't want to feel like a peasant constantly paying a tax to the monarch/state

If you're not paying your dues, why do you think the state should have an obligation to protect you and your property?

[Tagbert]

I live in a US state where I do pay property taxes but there is no income tax. Those property taxes and the overall sales tax are the main sources of revenue for the state.

I don't expect to live in an area without paying something to maintain it.

[bombcar]

I don't understand myself how LVT wouldn't result in what you see in many "high value" city centers (where business rents are insanely high) - miles and miles of law offices and banks, and not much else.

[VirusNewbie]

Taking up land is an externality, it’s not something that can be solved with a supply/demand curve. So, we tax it to encourage efficiency since our usual method if encouraging efficiency doesn’t work.

[Gormo]

> If there's a loophole such as lack of sales tax for car washes, fix that, but let the playing field remain even.

What is even the problem here that needs to be fixed? People have found a business model that is able to generate value from low-cost land that might otherwise lie vacant. Great, more power to them.

The idea that people's use of their own property should restricted or manipulated so the government can maximize tax revenue is the epitome of the tail wagging the dog.