[RP TownTalk] Land Value Tax Calculator

[David Hiles]

My messages to this list are being moderated because I was judged to 
have violated the posting standards.
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The LVT proposal says NOTHING (say it loud!)  about increasing or 
cutting total town tax revenues.  The LVT proposal is one that changes 
the base of taxation to a better footing.  The calculator is presented 
using rates which yield a REVENUE NEUTRAL result for the town as a 
whole.  Alternatively, it could be set to cut revenue or to raise it.  
Raising or cutting revenue is a SEPARATE TOPIC.

For a simple example of how a LVT would work for a commercial property 
see [ http://www.marylandlandtax.org/lvt ].

To see how the LVT would redistribute some of the tax load away from 
improvements and toward undeveloped property, open up the calculator [ 
http://www.marylandlandtax.org/calculator ] and put in a street like 
Riverdale or Baltimore or Kenilworth, or even your own street.  If you 
don't put in the street number, you will see a list of all the 
addresses on that street along with the tax change for each property.  
The calculator is set at rates which would not change the overall tax 
revenue coming into the town.  It shows what happens when you shift 
more of the payment onto undeveloped land.

The shifted amounts are small in most cases, which I think is what Mr. 
Lingua noticed.  This small initial shift is intentional, so that there 
is not a big disruption at the beginning.  The first change is 
something like a 20 percent cut in the tax rate on improvements, with 
the revenue made up by increasing the rate on land.  Over time, more of 
these changes are made so that the town eventually gets to the target 
high rate on land and the target low rate on improvements.  Making the 
change all at once is unnecessary and would be cause more problems than 
it would solve.

Thinking that the change would have to be either
	a) too small to be effective or
	b) so big that it would be disruptive
is one of the mistaken assumptions made when this topic was raised 
years ago.  Reasonable ideas like "make a small change for the better 
which becomes big over time" were lost in the noise and drama of the 
past.


WE are who we have been waiting for.
http://riverdalepark.blogspot.com/