If the rental value of the land were taxed away (replacing other, less-efficient taxes), the primary beneficiaries would be all those who can't currently afford to own their own home. The market doesn't care if you never intend to rent out the land you live on, it could be rented out and will be priced accordingly. Worse, land values are known to go up, and the market accounts for that too. You aren't just buying something you don't intend to rent out at prices dictated by how much it could be rented out for, you're also paying more for it because everyone else wants to speculate on its value.
Land value taxes attack both of these factors. The rental value is taxed away, and appreciation is also taxed away in the form of higher taxes on more valuable land.
Land owners usually clamor the other way. They want their land value to appreciate, as it does when society progresses, technology advances, and land values remain largely untaxed. As much as I favor it, land value taxation has a self-defeating quality to it. After enactment, land values fall because land ownership would be benefit and obligation in equal measure. Suddenly, every land owner has a direct incentive to get the tax repealed so that their property value can reinflate. It's one of those collective action situations where we can't have nice things because everyone wants what is better for them and worse for everyone.
I'd much rather be taxed for my land usage than my income and spending, and not spend the majority of my working life indebted to a bank because land, one of the necessities of life, is a non-depreciating asset with considerable rental value, prone to speculative bubbles. I would rather be incentivized to use my land well by a tax rate that doesn't care what I do with it, than be punished for development through property taxes that go up if I try to use the land better (not that I could if I wanted to, but restrictive zoning bylaws are a separate problem).
Any transition to LVT would need to be done gradually to prevent our finance/insurance/real-estate-based economy from cratering. This would require collaboration and collective force of will far beyond what our ossified society is actually capable of. It's more than just tax policy, it's the idea that land appreciation belongs to the landlord rather than to the society that caused it. I'm convinced that we would sooner collapse than transform something so fundamental.
Land value taxes attack both of these factors. The rental value is taxed away, and appreciation is also taxed away in the form of higher taxes on more valuable land.
Land owners usually clamor the other way. They want their land value to appreciate, as it does when society progresses, technology advances, and land values remain largely untaxed. As much as I favor it, land value taxation has a self-defeating quality to it. After enactment, land values fall because land ownership would be benefit and obligation in equal measure. Suddenly, every land owner has a direct incentive to get the tax repealed so that their property value can reinflate. It's one of those collective action situations where we can't have nice things because everyone wants what is better for them and worse for everyone.
I'd much rather be taxed for my land usage than my income and spending, and not spend the majority of my working life indebted to a bank because land, one of the necessities of life, is a non-depreciating asset with considerable rental value, prone to speculative bubbles. I would rather be incentivized to use my land well by a tax rate that doesn't care what I do with it, than be punished for development through property taxes that go up if I try to use the land better (not that I could if I wanted to, but restrictive zoning bylaws are a separate problem).
Any transition to LVT would need to be done gradually to prevent our finance/insurance/real-estate-based economy from cratering. This would require collaboration and collective force of will far beyond what our ossified society is actually capable of. It's more than just tax policy, it's the idea that land appreciation belongs to the landlord rather than to the society that caused it. I'm convinced that we would sooner collapse than transform something so fundamental.