Some arguments against a land value tax (2024)

Perceived impact on homeowners and regressivity

• Strong concern that an LVT would act as a de facto squeeze on middle‑class single‑family homeowners who are “land rich, cash poor,” forcing sales to well‑capitalized investors and developers.
• Defenders counter that land ownership is highly concentrated among the wealthy, so a land tax is not inherently regressive, and can be made progressive via exemptions (e.g., primary residence, value thresholds, homestead rules, elderly deferrals).
• Critics reply that once you add enough exemptions to handle “grandma in the big house” and family farms, the scheme starts to resemble current property tax with extra complexity.

Green space, parks, and community land

• Multiple commenters worry that LVT structurally penalizes low‑intensity uses such as urban green space, community gardens, informal lots, and private-but-open land, either by directly taxing the landholder more or by raising neighbors’ taxes and fueling NIMBY opposition.
• Others respond that zoning, 501(c)(3) exemptions, or designating land as parkland (low or zero development value) can protect many such spaces and that more efficient urban land use could even free up area for public parks.

Valuing “unimproved” land

• A large thread disputes whether “unimproved land value” is even a coherent, observable quantity.
• Skeptics note that there are markets for “land + building,” not pure land; assessments are often political, noisy, and detached from sale prices. Different estimation methods could produce very different incentive structures.
• Supporters reply that assessors already split land vs improvements for today’s property taxes, there are tear‑down sales and other signals, and perfect accuracy is unnecessary for LVT to be a major improvement.

Incentives, development, and housing affordability

• Pro‑LVT side: it reduces deadweight loss from underused high‑value land (e.g., surface parking, speculation), pushes owners toward building or selling, and ensures community‑created value (schools, transit, amenities) accrues to the public rather than passive landlords.
• Critics: LVT also “implicitly taxes” nearby improvements, could discourage local upgrades, and assumes easy mobility and development capital; they doubt it will yield truly affordable rather than luxury housing and argue for direct public/mixed‑income construction and zoning reform instead.

Role in the tax mix and politics

• Many argue LVT should be one component among others (consumption, Pigouvian, occupancy, resource taxes), not a 100% “single tax.”
• Transition is seen as the hardest part: large shocks to existing owners, risk of assessment spikes and tax revolts, and strong political resistance from entrenched land interests.

Meta-discussion

• A side thread questions LessWrong/rationalist culture and motives; others defend it as simply an attempt to reason more explicitly about policy, with internal disagreement on LVT’s merits.