A new tax plan would reform the city’s famously low vacancy tax rates in an effort to stimulate more housing development and limit speculation.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is proposing a tax plan that would sharply increase the city’s low tax on vacant and underutilized lots. As Robin Runyan explains in Urbanize Detroit, the Land Value Tax Plan, as it’s called, “would increase the tax millage on land and reduce the millage on structures.”
According to Duggan, the plan “would triple the taxes on land while decreasing taxes on buildings by 30%,” promising a tax cut for almost all of the city’s homeowners and multifamily housing developments.
“This plan would affect owners of surface lots we see all over downtown Detroit, vacant buildings within residential neighborhoods, abandoned factories, and vacant lots often used as dumping grounds throughout the city.” Runyan adds that the plan would have to be approved by the state legislature this fall, then by voters next year, before being phased in over three years.
FULL STORY: Proposed tax plan in Detroit addresses blight, land speculators
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Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Nashville Planning Department
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Journal of the American Planning Association