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Property taxes are two taxes stapled together: one on the land, one on whatever gets built on it. Put up an apartment building and the bill goes up. Pave the lot for parking and it stays low. It discourages building and rewards land speculation. The answer? Tax the buildings less and the land more. The idea of a “land value tax” goes back 150 years, but implementing it today involves navigating tricky constitutional issues. In this episode, I talk with Greg Miller of the Center for Land economics about the rationale for such taxes, and with Kitty Klitzke, a Spokane, Washington council member, about the difficulties of putting it in practice in a real city.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
03:22 Henry George and the case for taxing land
08:12 How property taxes work now, and what a split rate changes
11:26 Land value taxes and upzoning as complements
15:18 The Pennsylvania record and the reassessment problem
18:51 Vancouver, and why homeowners outlast the policy
24:03 Estonia, Singapore, and the Scottish Islands
26:53 Washington's uniformity clause and the building exemption
33:18 Kitty Klitzke on twenty years of Spokane infill
43:27 What Spokane needs from the state legislature
45:25 Single family homeowners and the Division corridor
48:34 The assessor objection
52:45 What the Spokane modeling shows
59:31 The plan for next session
1:01:44 Virginia, Kentucky, and cross-partisan momentum
