--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > For a very brief period of time several places in South Carolina > tried to tax idle land. The accessor would try to figure out what the most valuable improvement to the land would be and then asses based on that. It was a horrible failure. > What did happen is that landlords would throw up the absolute cheapest building that he could in order to avoid the assesor coming up with some idea.< > Mitch
That is an incorrect way of assessing land value. The correct way to estimate the land value based on its best use is to use typical neighboring land values. The particular improvements of the particular plot under consideration should be utterly ignored. The site owner would then have no incentive to put up something just for show. Hong Kong is an example of successful public revenue from land value or rent. Under the UK colonial government, the government there obtained much of its revenue from leasing sites, which in turn were leased for 99 years from China until 1997. The rental revenue enables the administration to have low taxes (they could have zero taxes). Sidney, Australia, is among several cities world-wide which exempt improvements from the real-estate property tax, taxing only the land value. It does not seem to me that there have been any ill effects there or other cities that exempt improvements. Fred Foldvary ===== [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Find a job, post your resume. http://careers.yahoo.com
