Why a land tax? Many (most? all?) towns and cities have a real estate tax.

Good question because I think land value is important.

Pretty much every country in the west has a housing shortage. There is no free land anywhere downtown so you can’t just take some land and build on it for free.

With real estate tax. Let’s say you have 3 patches of land around the central railway station downtown. You have huge office building on one, you have a old, crappy by modern standard, home and you have a vacant lot that the owner can’t be bothered doing anything with. They all get taxed three different amounts. In fact by taxing them different amounts you are encouraging the market to devalue assets on that land to minimise their taxes.

If taxes were based on the value of that land it would incenitivise you to maximise the space. So a 1 person home would end up paying 10x that of a 10 home apartment complex per home. Low cost housing would be cheaper, lavish estate homes would be costlier.

If you want a market oriented fix to the housing crisis, to low density, to lack of public transport, for people buying land and sitting on it doing nothing, for rich people not paying taxes on thing and just holding onto wealth they have inherited. Then land value tax solves all these issues, or at least encourages it.

(I still think corporations should be able to own homes. It’s a fantasy to expect the hosuing system to be better without it. But I does need fixing LVT is a way to help fix it).