[stephen_cagle]

Really seems to me that there should be no exemption for land tax for non profits or religious reasons. It is just far too subject to abuse, and it means that we have large churches in the middle of incredibly dense cities that pay almost nothing in taxes.

[bilbo0s]

I don't know man?

The issue is that, most of the time, "incredibly dense cities" are not the places where this is hitting the hardest. It's the smaller towns where the impact of hospital rollups hits hardest on the property tax rolls.

Problem is, of course, that if we don't get one of the hospitals in, say, Houston, to put a facility in, say, Nacogdoches, on its books; then that facility may go away entirely. In which case you'd have issues in the market with inequity of access for the very populations who may need that access most. (Elderly and poor.) But if you do allow it, well, you have issues with property tax rises.

So local leaders are put in a position of having to weigh the value of having a hospital or clinic be available locally, against any potential decrease in property tax revenues. Now you hope they get that cost-benefit analysis correct, but there's no guarantee.

But churches? Yeah. Not so much.

[bickfordb]

In my metro area it irks me to see the churches with large empty parking lots empty most of the week. We have a housing shortage and they seem to have no little incentive to convert their parking to more productive use.

I agree, the whole ruse that these 501s meaningfully does charitable work for our communities is laughable and their tax exemption should be revoked, at least with regard to land taxes.

[ars]

There are almost no places where a housing shortage is due to a lack of land. Housing shortages have all sorts of reasons, from constructions cost, to zoning, to restrictions on what can be built, but it's virtually never a lack of land.

And parking is a productive use - they have services once a week, and parking means people can come to the service. That's the definition of productive use. Something does not need to be used 24/7 to be productive.

[ars]

The idea is that we give up the land tax revenues in exchange for the services the non-profit provides. (And of course the government does not decide which services are useful or not, the people do.)

One thing I might agree with is land tax for non-profits that charge fees for services, as opposed to those who work off of donations. I think that would fix the issue without destroying non-profits.

[xnx]

Yes. And then after many years, the appreciated land is sold for a profit.

[ars]

A profit for who? It's a non-profit. If the sale netted extra money it goes back to the people who donated, or to another non-profit.

[afewscribbles]

Do you think a government should be able to seize property under eminent domain if they believe that selling it to a third party to commercially develop would lead to higher tax revenue?

[shimman]

The government already has and does do exactly this. Is this suppose to be a gotcha? If you have very valuable property, you should pay taxes on it. Claiming that you have ownership over land on this planet is odd, you didn't create the land and governments change overtime.

[ihsw]

Or property taxes should be eliminated because they are subject to abuse, and instead sales tax should be the primary source of income for all governments.

[DiggyJohnson]

Is there a term for this approach? I don’t think it’s ludicrous enough to be flagged and buried at least…