I’ll admit that this is problematic, but there are rules about what you can and can’t do with land owned by a property tax-exempt entity, I think.
In my ideal world, of course, nothing would be exempt from the land value tax, not churches or charities or universities. Land use is land use, and the tax is meant to incentivize the best possible use for it; if you can’t afford to pay it, go somewhere else and let the land be redeveloped for a use that can.
I admit that this is politically impossible and plausibly unconstitutional (taxing churches gets into the separation of church and state; I feel that a simple rule saying that no religion-owned property can be taxed at advantageous or disadvantageous rates compared to the surrounding properties satisfies this, but I understand that many other people feel differently), so I’m not trying to make it happen in real life.
In real life, if you (say) rented office space for a for-profit company out of a church to get around paying property taxes, I suspect (although don’t know for sure) that that’s tax fraud of some sort, and a crime.
I’ll admit that this is problematic, but there are rules about what you can and can’t do with land owned by a property tax-exempt entity, I think.
In my ideal world, of course, nothing would be exempt from the land value tax, not churches or charities or universities. Land use is land use, and the tax is meant to incentivize the best possible use for it; if you can’t afford to pay it, go somewhere else and let the land be redeveloped for a use that can.
I admit that this is politically impossible and plausibly unconstitutional (taxing churches gets into the separation of church and state; I feel that a simple rule saying that no religion-owned property can be taxed at advantageous or disadvantageous rates compared to the surrounding properties satisfies this, but I understand that many other people feel differently), so I’m not trying to make it happen in real life.
In real life, if you (say) rented office space for a for-profit company out of a church to get around paying property taxes, I suspect (although don’t know for sure) that that’s tax fraud of some sort, and a crime.