A little housecleaning business to tend to this morning.
First, Chris Briem emails to correct my Pittsburgh land value tax history. Pittsburgh has had the two-rate tax on land and buildings since 1916, but 1980 is when the land rate was raised 5 times that for buildings, bringing it closer to a straight LVT. The LVT got scrapped in the 2000-2001 reassessment fight, but the downtown Business Improvement District still uses the tiered tax. What a shame!
Jennifer Kates also dropped by with some more info for us on the Philly land bank bill, and a companion bill:
I understand the point, and it’s an important one – so far philadelphia has been just been playing around with various heightened licensing fees for vacant land, as essentially a back door anti-speculation tax. but i want to note that a feature of the land bank, as we proposed it, will be to create an easier road to get vacant/abandoned properties to tax foreclosure sale. and a companion bill introduced today will force faster tax collections for all those heavily debt burdened properties. so the private parcels are definitely on our mind.
Actually, the downtown district in Pittsburgh is funded by land tax only. To the point in Philadelphia, a land bank is a new twist on an old plan, but the whole point is to ensure that there is one agency that handles the land (the bank), and an incorruptible process to get land back on the tax rolls quickly. That has been the challenge for decades, as the political process always intersects with the policy process; not a recipe for success in my Phair city of Phily.
Also, a very valuable vacant lot can still owe back taxes for 10 years, still collect revenue for the owner, and still stay unmolested by the city. Until the turnaround time between tax delinquency and land seizure is sped up, I don't see how much can improve.
In any case, the city of Philadelphia still has to find out how to operate without annual tax increases, how to rejuvenate areas without massive tax breaks, and back away form wage and business taxes. The answer? Land value tax, as recommended by everybody except never adopted.
This year, a new reassessment will concentrate minds in City Hall, of that I am confident.