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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

Want less sprawl and more urban infill? Try a land value tax!

Volts

Want less sprawl and more urban infill? Try a land value tax!