Where there’s an opportunity to game the system, those with means will.
Absolutely. It’s one of my few gripes with georgism. And at the end of the day a shitty implementation of georgism is better than our current shit show of billionaires and mega corps paying $0 or next to $0 in taxes. Sometimes they even get paid instead.
But anyways, I haven’t seen much detail about how to fairly valuate land, but I’ve had some thoughts on it. The number one thing should be that all land is taxed at the same percentage, but each plot is valued differently. I think one of the ways to do this would be to simply calculate how far a given plot is from the nearest city center, and factor in how big the population of that city is.
It’s something that can be objectively measured, should be roughly correlated with what we could subjectively agree on is valuable, and isn’t something that could be gamed easily.
I would like to see working examples first, if possible.
The Netherlands has a land value tax, though it is not the sole income source for their government.
My understanding is that the government employs people to assign a value to each plot, and from there the use case of the land is considered. Land owners can then appeal the judgement if they like. I know there are some other countries besides the Netherlands that have a LVT system, but the Netherlands is the first that comes to mind. I’d honestly be ok with either of these systems of determining land value, either the one I made up or the Netherland’s. At the end of the day it’s pretty much the only way to tax the rich without them just moving their money elsewhere. You can’t move land after all, and much of their wealth is tied up in land.
Here is a research paper into the effects that might interest you.