actually doing nothing

[Russell Kanning]

I found someone doing something.
http://www.freestateobserver.com/

[KBCraig]

How about we go the other way and not have a property tax? or
If there is a property tax, none should pay it.

What tax is more fair than the property tax?  I think the income tax is worse.  I also think a food tax is worse.  We cannot end all taxes overnight.

The unfairness is in how property is valued. "Value" is a one-time, single transaction figure. It only applies when a seller and buyer agree on a figure, and only at the time they're willing to complete the transaction.

A subsistence farmer on a generations-old farm values it for the family history and his ability to independently feed himself and his family; there can be no monetary value placed upon that if he's not willing to sell. The fact that a shopping mall, or dozens of McMansions paying "view tax" could be placed on that land is immaterial. The going rate for similar properties is immaterial. Taxing your land based on what someone else would be willing to pay for it, as opposed to the value you place upon it, is completely unfair.

Kevin

[FrankChodorov]

Taxing your land based on what someone else would be willing to pay for it, as opposed to the value you place upon it, is completely unfair.

you don't understand the difference then between market value and personal utility value...

[FrankChodorov]

Taxing your land based on what someone else would be willing to pay for it, as opposed to the value you place upon it, is completely unfair.

you don't understand the difference then between market value and personal utility value...

Unfortunately there has been some confusion promulgated by the
Austrian school of economics. There are two meanings in the study of
economics for the term "value." One is personal value, or utility,
which is entirely subjective, and the other is exchange or market
value, which can almost always be determined objectively.

Clearly, it is market value that is being taxed under the land value
portion of our property tax system in NH, not personal utility. When
the objection arises that nobody can know how much the owner
personally values a property, the proper response is that it is
nobody's business in the first place, and that nobody is suggesting a
tax on personal utility.

Market value is the subject of taxation. When land value is
substantially taxed and the owner continues to hold the property, it
is safe to assume that the land's utility to that person is either
greater than or roughly equal to the market value. Otherwise, he would
sell it.

However, none of that is any of our business. Our business is to levy
a charge that reflects the public's loss of access to that land, for
it is the public that would either use that land or rent it out to
another if the title holder were not holding it exclusively.

This makes market value, rather than personal utility, the appropriate
measure for tax purposes. The market, the public and the community
are all the same thing. We just call it the market when it expresses
itself economically, the public when it expresses itself politically,
and the community (or society) when it expresses itself socially. In
all cases, it is the aggregate effect of individual actions. While
each individual action is subjective and unpredictable, the aggregate
effects are easily measured.

[Dreepa]

Are you not allowed to camp in any of NH's government forests without paying?

No I think that there is a charge.

[FrankChodorov]

The problem I have with "property tax" is that it makes an assumption not in evidence:  namely, that I choose to participate in their currency. 

I believe that people should have the option, if they so choose, of subsistence living.  Property tax seems to imply that their use of the land, either as a subsistence farmer or a hunter/gatherer, is legitimate only insofar as they continue to fork over phony "dollars" to a "state" that they may not even acknowledge.

If I want to "Thoreau it" ... I should have that option; my land shouldn't be seized because I am not using that land to create "wealth" and subsequently turning that wealth over to some supposed authority.

this is easy to rectify and can be handle in the way I proposed at the US BIG conference in Philly this past weekend.

just allow a lien to be placed on the land value that gets placed in a land bank which then collateralizes a local currency in the form of a citizen dividend/basic income guarantee.

[FrankChodorov]

another way to look at those who want to "Thoreau it"...

if you paid out 5K in economic rent directly to your neighbors and they inturn paid you directly 4K then you would have an 80% homestead/"thoreau" exemption on the socially created land value that you have exclusive possession of...

[Dreepa]

another way to look at those who want to "Thoreau it"...

if you paid out 5K in economic rent directly to your neighbors and they inturn paid you directly 4K then you would have an 80% homestead/"thoreau" exemption on the socially created land value that you have exclusive possession of...

It is like Charlie Brown's teacher is talking.

I am not paying rent to anyone nor do I expect rent from anyone.

[Fluff and Stuff]

Are you not allowed to camp in any of NH's government forests without paying?

No I think that there is a charge.

That's crazy.  Even in places like IL they have national forests that allow you to camp for free.  Maybe you can at the national forest in NH.  BTW, I am not talking about campsites, just land with few trees that you are allowed to camp on as long you don't make it ugly.

[FrankChodorov]

I am not paying rent to anyone nor do I expect rent from anyone.

so what are we to do with the economic rent that naturally attaches to all locations when two or more people compete for access even in an anarchy?

[KBCraig]

Since this thread has drifted into land usage, local planning/zoning boards are a way to have a huge impact on freedom.

From the March 1 Union Leader:

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Fergus+Cullen%3a+Local+planning+boards+choke+growth+by+trampling+rights&articleId=7e47d8bd-0f26-4852-b6b2-3506bfab2673

Fergus Cullen: Local planning boards choke growth by trampling rights

By FERGUS CULLEN

2 hours, 32 minutes ago

THE MOST powerful people in local government may be the ones with the lowest profile: the nearly anonymous members of planning and zoning boards who craft land use policies regulating the type and pace of growth in our communities.

?Keep Sandwich Sandwich? was the theme of one community meeting I attended last year. Change the name of the town, and that about sums up the goal of planning boards across the state. The intent is admirable. The execution usually isn?t.

In typical New Hampshire towns, planning boards have a narrow agenda they implement in a very un-New Hampshire way: Stop growth, or at least limit it as much as possible, using the heavy hand of government regulation. Most planning boards serve as drawbridge operators. They dig regulatory moats around their town designed to prevent further development, then pull up the bridge to prevent anyone new from entering their citadel.

To those who say southern New Hampshire is built-out and the rest of the state will be soon, Jeff Keehler offers this observation: The town of Londonderry sits on 42 square miles and has a population of about 24,000. The city of Boston takes up 48 square miles and is home to 600,000 people.

Keehler, chair of the policy committee for the New Hampshire Realtors Association, is comfortable wearing the black hat when it comes to the debate about controlling growth. ?If you take an airplane and fly over southern New Hampshire, you see a lot of land that?s undeveloped,? Keehler says. He calls the term ?planning board? a misnomer. ?They?re reactionary boards.?

Illustrating Keehler?s point, a candidate running for the planning board in a Lakes Region town sounds this warning: ?If you stand at the Alton Traffic Circle and look down Route 11 towards Rochester, you can almost see the growth coming towards us.? But growth has already sprouted, just as it has for some 200 years, right between his watchful eyes. Proof includes the new Hannaford?s being built at that location, which will be the only full-size grocery within 15 miles, and Prospect Mountain High School, which opened a mile down the road just 18 months ago.

Some 47 New Hampshire towns have growth ordinances of some kind. Tactics include caps on the number of building permits a town issues each year, in total or to any one developer; large minimum lot sizes; and in 24 New Hampshire communities, impact fees. In Londonderry, for example, a developer planning a three bedroom home has to pay nearly $8,000 in impact fees for schools, recreation, police and library services.

Anti-growth ordinances also have the unintended ? which is not to say, for their backers, unwelcome ? consequence of exacerbating the lack of affordable housing, especially in more rural or affluent places. It?s a supply and demand issue: Artificially limiting the supply increases demand, driving up prices. Teachers, nurses and firefighters are effectively priced out of many communities they serve.

Once in place, many towns start moving the goal posts by making existing regulations more restrictive, as Loudon has done by twice cutting the number of permits it issues. Or they will discriminate, selectively making it easier to build senior-only housing but harder for young families, as in Bow. Other towns cheat with interim growth management ordinances, meant only for unusual situations, to halt development. This is happening in Wolfeboro, where the planning board has decided that after 30 years of 2.5 percent annual growth, continued growth at that rate constitutes a sudden emergency. When towns end up in court defending sketchy anti-growth rules ? as Derry, Northwood, Barnstead and Hooksett have in recent years ? drawn-out legal proceedings often accomplish the initial goal of blocking or delaying development, win or lose.

Those concerned about the erosion of property rights and the misuse of eminent domain might want to spend less time eyeing the Supreme Court and more reading the minutes of their local planning board. Adopting a mandatory minimum lot size of, say, five acres, means a landowner?s 19 acre parcel now contains only three buildable lots. His property has been devalued by the government without compensation.

Despite all this maneuvering, larger economic forces still have more effect on growth than local zoning regulations. Growth happens when the economy is strong and interest rates are low. The most effective anti-growth measures are a slumping economy and high interest rates.

Big government in small town New Hampshire? Alive and well on planning boards, unfortunately.

[FrankChodorov]

zoning is a blunt tool communities use to deal with negative externalities but don't get at root problems - the inefficient use of land as the result of treating it like a commodity.

[BaRbArIaN]

Land Socialism isn't the answer either, private property rights should be enforced by any govt., not negated by ideology and greed.

[FrankChodorov]

Land Socialism isn't the answer either, private property rights should be enforced by any govt., not negated by ideology and greed.

private property rights are based on self-ownership and it's natural extension labor.

neither the land itself nor the unimproved land values are the creation of human labor.

beyond a certain point (Locke's proviso) you can not have absolute property rights to labor at the same time as absolute property rights to land.

they are mutually exclusive.

which do you choose?

slavery

or

equal liberty

[BaRbArIaN]

What a fallacious linkage there. 

Land wasn't created by people but it has been taken over and owned by people.  Your whole Georgist scheme involves changing which people get to use it, the "legal" owners (don't like the laws change them) or people claiming they get the right to welfare payments to allow someone to own/use it.  Its a crock, let it go.