Texas is not Georgist. Property tax is assessed on the full market value of property, not on land. And Texas’s land speculation and sprawling, inefficient land use reflects this.
Agreed - its not pure Georgism. It is however the closest experiment to Georgism in the US as far as I can tell having looked at their tax revenue sources (mostly property taxes with some petroleum production tax and no income tax) and the fact that they will attempt to increase the property taxes to market value on an empty lot. For now at least...
"What we're trying to do is value that land as if it were vacant — or that lot — and ready to be put to its highest and best use, which is to build a single-family home on, And we do that by looking at lot sales of what would be a competitive or a substitute product."
It’s good they’re trying to match market value. They come up with that assessment by assessing the land value, and the structure value, and adding them together. But they are still taxing improvements at the same rate as the land. Sure, land value can rise and become a greater portion of the total market value. But this is still conventional property taxation.
In a pure LVT system the structure should play no part. The landowner should be free to build whatever they want on their land without such building causing a change to their taxes. A partial step towards LVT would be a “split rate” system, where the value of the land is taxed at a higher rate, say 5%, than the value of the structures, which could be 0.5%.
