Comment 92226

By ViennaCafe (registered) | Posted September 16, 2013 at 22:39:16

"The conventional property tax, which taxes land and buildings at the same rate, is essentially backwards when it comes to the behaviors it incentivizes. It penalizes property owners for building or making improvements to their structures, while rewarding speculators and absentee landlords who would rather allow their properties to decay than make expensive (and annually taxable) improvements. Taxing land and buildings at the same rate means that as long as you don’t put any buildings on your land, your tax bill is going to remain relatively cheap. If you’re a speculator, this means that you only need a modest amount of revenue (say, a few bucks a day from people driving into the city for work or to go shopping) in order to sit on that land indefinitely, or until someone comes along offering your “pie-in-the-sky” price (to quote one downtown city planner I spoke to)—effectively keeping the land out of the hands of those with genuine interest in putting it to productive use."

http://streetsblog.net/2012/12/10/want-t...

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