pete wrote:
On Thu, 06 Feb 2003, Harry Pollard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If Britain collected Rent with a land-value tax - this would happen
anyway. It would become uneconomic to keep land unused.
Would such a collection be fair? Of course - the value of a site is not
produced by the occupier of a site, but by the people of the community
around it. If the community then re-captured this value, they would be
getting back the value they created. And, incidentally, the sites would
be fully used - for vacant land and sub-par housing would become
unprofitable.
OK, I'm puzzled by this. Doesn't everybody do this already? I pay a
property tax based on a property assessment.
[snip]
I don't know about UK, but I do know a bit about USA.
I try to look at such things as home ownership as
anthropological explorations, because it would be too
depressing to treat them as part of the culture I
truly belong to and in....
Anyway, I have discovered that property taxes are sort of
like bonds, only in reverse. If a bond pays a high
interest rate, it goes for a higher rate than a bond that
pays a low interest rate.
Property taxes "over here" are almost like Aristotelean
primary qualities. What do I mean by that? The house
I bought was "cheap" -- BUT IT HAS A VERY HIGH PROPERTY
TAX. The houses all around sell for higher prices, and
a large part of the reason is that they have MUCH LOWER
PROPERTY TAXES. So, just like one would probably
pay more for a property that was close to a fire
hydrant and a bus stop and a public road that gets
plowed in the snow, etc., the property taxes on a
property is part of its long term valuation (every
year of this crap that goes by makes it ever more
unlikely that there will be a tax reassessment).
I don't think this is exactly what Harry had in
mind (am I right, Harry?).
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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