tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post9107921876381571225..comments2024-03-29T03:50:00.893-04:00Comments on Urban kchoze: What is zoning good for?simval84http://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-13895651808206977292019-07-26T07:48:24.857-04:002019-07-26T07:48:24.857-04:00Vacancy tax is another tool, less efficient than L...Vacancy tax is another tool, less efficient than LVT but politically easier since DC already has one and others are talking about it. DC occupied property is taxed at some low rate, vacant at 5%, blighted at 10%.Damien Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13321329197063620556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-54709483169401935652015-08-27T15:37:53.847-04:002015-08-27T15:37:53.847-04:00Thank you for this detailed article about zoning. ...Thank you for this detailed article about zoning. Your analogies made the otherwise complicated topic much easier to understand. I’ve picked up some good points through your post, and I’m sure that people who’ll read this will pick up a lot of new things to learn. Keep it up!<br /><br /><a href="https://markbentleypa.wordpress.com/2015/08/01/eminent-domain-attorneys-get-the-most-out-of-property-with-valuation/" rel="nofollow"> Daniel Roberson @ MarkBentleyPA </a>Daniel Robersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15651694091995505661noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-33191454845387104692014-09-12T00:15:38.517-04:002014-09-12T00:15:38.517-04:00I entirely agree about land value taxation. A land...I entirely agree about land value taxation. A land value tax punishes speculation and forces owners to sell their unused or under-used land to developers quickly.<br /><br />I think it would be easier to implement than you think. A few cities in Pennsylvania have implemented it relatively quickly, prompting important renewal of their downtown areas. The thing is that most cities actually already appraise land value as part of appraising property value. At least I know that in Québec they do so, the appraisals are open to the public and I've consulted a few, all of which differentiated between the land value and the building value.<br /><br />In Pennsylvania, the cities that implemented LVT simply created two tax rates: one for the land value and another for the "improvement" value. In general, there is a single property tax that is applied both on land and building equally. In Pittsburgh, they made the tax on land nearly 6 times higher than the tax on improvement (building). I don't have the exact rates, but it means for instance that if the property tax rate was 1% before, it has been split into, say, a 3% tax on land value and a 0,5% on improvement.<br /><br />Another approach is a "street frontage" tax, where there is a levy proportional to how wide the lot is, which is useful to represent that the cost of providing public service like roads and sewers is proportional to distance. Again, that's a tax that ignores the actual value of the building and thus falls more on the shoulders of under-used lots than on those of high-value buildings.simval84https://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-31547567857021653902014-09-09T21:31:13.539-04:002014-09-09T21:31:13.539-04:00Regarding the advantages of zoning for reducing la...Regarding the advantages of zoning for reducing land value to a point to prevent speculative hoarding, another approach is to have land value taxation.<br /><br />One way to implement land value tax for a number of lots of similar value would be to tax them at a rate that depends on the number that are owned (so a very low rate if a small minority are owned and a much higher rate if a large majority are owned). If there are a sufficient number of lots, the market can figure out the value of the land at any given moment and all this value gets taxed away. (There would be fine points to work out like how to figure out which lots should be of similar value when no two are identical, and whether the tax rate for the first lots should increase immediately when later lots sell or gradually, but the system would react to market conditions and create the right incentives. Lots could be public parks until they sell).<br /><br />It would be hard to implement in Houston, because everything is owned already, but it is what I would do if I was starting a moon colony, probably replacing the revenue of more anti-urban taxes like income tax and sales tax, which discourage division of labour.Joshhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05484810849321286652noreply@blogger.com