Wiki · Concepts
Land Value Capture
The broad family of public-finance tools that recover, for public benefit, the land-value increases created by public investment and community growth.
Definition
Land value capture (LVC) is the umbrella term for policies that recover publicly created land value for the public. When a government builds a transit line, rezones an area, or provides services, nearby land rises in value — the unearned increment. LVC mechanisms return some or all of that increase to the public that created it.
Instruments
- Land value tax / split-rate tax — recurrent taxation of land value (LVT, split-rate).
- Betterment levies / special assessments — one-time charges on properties benefiting from a public project.
- Tax increment financing (TIF) — funding infrastructure from the resulting rise in tax base.
- Public land leasing — the state retains ownership and leases land, capturing appreciation directly (as in Singapore and Hong Kong).
- Land Value Increment Tax — taxing the gain at transfer (as in Taiwan).
Significance
LVC is the pragmatic, widely-adopted face of Georgist ideas: even governments that would never embrace a "single tax" routinely use betterment levies and lease revenue. It is a major research focus of the Lincoln Institute.
See Also
Sources
- Lincoln Institute studies of land value capture (Taiwan, Hong Kong case studies). Taiwan PDF
- Dye & England (2010) — wiki summary