Implementing the change more narrowly would allow you to test that assumption.
You’re reframing tax-policy to shape landowner behavior towards your desired outcome on the presumption that this will be an improvement of the land by increasing the cost of owning it by fiat. Sin taxes exist for a similar reason and have similar problems.
Taxes should not be conceded as an instrument of power to reorient society into a form viewed by a subset of society as correct, but recognized as what they are sold as: a levy to provide revenue for an unprofitable but necessary organization (“the government”) to raise revenue in order to service its obligations to society. To the extent that this shapes behavior, it is as an unavoidable side effect. When you treat the side effect as the goal, you lose sight of the fact that regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all.
Why? If taxes are going to have side effects anyway, I think we should try to make those effects positive instead of negative.
> Regardless of reason, taxation is a taking of assets from its owners, and this is a moral compromise we tolerate in service of having a government at all.
I don't think I agree with that.
For example, I also think we should have a (revenue neutral) carbon tax. Part of the tax's purpose would indeed be to fund the government, but the other purpose would be to make people pay for the actual social cost of emitting carbon into the atmosphere, as opposed to passing them on to the broader public. This would allow the free market actually work properly.
You're ignoring the reductions/eliminations of other taxes. For example, replacing property taxes with LVT is the usual "first step", and would reduce costs for most homeowners (whose land is typically less valuable than the house sitting on it). Same with sales tax, or income tax, or any other non-LVT tax; non-LVT taxes are less efficient than LVT, so replacing them with LVT would maximize tax revenue while reducing individual tax burdens for all but the largest landowners (namely: landlords, be they residential or commercial/industrial).
> taxation is a taking of assets from its owners
The private ownership of land is itself theft from the commons, and is itself the product of state power and authority. A tax on the value of that land is therefore compensation for that theft, and is more than fair.
Modern society has gone on long enough letting land owners have their cake and eat it too. If land owners expect society to respect their exclusive claims over land, then it's on them to compensate society accordingly.
