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0 pointsmullingitover5y ago0 comments

> Do you have an example of where LVT was tried at scale anywhere at all ever?

Pennsylvania[1].

> The number of vacant structures in Harrisburg declined from over 4200 in 1982 to under 500 by 2001. The downtown—previously a ghost town—is alive, even at night. The number of businesses on the tax roll has grown from 1,908 to 8,864.

> After LVT was adopted by voters in 1996, 70% of residential parcels saw a tax decrease; importantly, in the most at-risk neighborhoods (older pre-war housing and factory blocks) upwards of 90% of homes had their tax liability reduced. Local business taxes were frozen by law at 1996 levels. Construction returned to the city: the number of taxable building permits surged past neighboring Bethlehem, market investment returned, and capital improvement reappeared in city budgets. Tax burdens on productive work and business declined. The losers in this trade were absentee owners of vacant lots, who had to shoulder much more of the burden.

[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-g...

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AnthonyMouse5y ago

So this is basically considering the opposite scenario -- not one in which there is pent up demand but one in which there are many existing abandoned buildings. Moreover, it's a scenario in which the introduction of LVT was not revenue neutral -- you're including in the measurement the economic benefits of a tax cut. It means you're essentially here:

> It seems obvious that this only works if the amount of the land tax isn't large enough to cause these behavioral changes.

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