Land Value Capture & Tax Around the Globe
Last updated March 19, 2026
Many countries around the world implement some form of land value capture (LVC), land value taxation (LVT), or property taxation systems that include aspects of taxing the value of land separately from improvements. While all jurisdictions that apply property taxes do tax some component of the land, only some countries tax the land independently.
Here are some notable jurisdictions where land value tax, land value capture, or similar systems are in place:
Australia
Australia has a long history of LVT going back to its inception. Its purposes are principally revenue generation. Currently all states impose some form of the tax but most families do not pay thanks to personal or principal residence exemptions. An important feature of the application of the tax itself is progressivity with states employing some form of bracketed rates.
New South Wales (NSW): Taxes land above roughly $1,000,000 at 1.6% and land about roughly $6,500,000 at 2%. All farm and principal residences are exempted. Recent announcements of brackets beginning to freeze in place have caused investors to leave the market, or restructure their investments.
Other States: Similar land taxes are implemented in states like Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia.
There is significant advocacy and movement in some territories to abolish a stamp duty tax and replace it entirely with increases to the land value tax.
New Zealand
Local Government Rates: Property taxes include components based on land value. Some local councils use land value rating systems. While all properties are assessed by their land and capital (structure) value, most urban centers apply the tax to the entire property value while rural municipalities tend to utilize land value taxes. Some use a mix i.e. split-rate taxes.
Hong Kong
Government Rent: A system where land leaseholders pay rent based on the land value. This functions as a land value tax but on its face is a 3% tax on the rateable value of land leased from the government. An expressed objective of this system is equity and the primary taxation of land leases.
Land Value Capture via “Rail + Property”: This model captures land value by integrating transit development with real estate—the government grants land around new rail stations to the transit authority at pre-rail prices, which then develops or leases it at higher post-rail values, using the profit to fund transit infrastructure.
Singapore
Property Tax: A system that taxes the annual rental value of the entire property as opposed to its market value. For the majority of properties, their rental value is primarily of land rent therefore the tax functions as a land value tax. It is applied progressively with reductions for owner-occupied homes, maxing out at 16% for 160,000 SGD of rental value.
Commercial properties pay a flat 10% rental value tax.
Land Value Capture: Singapore employs a robust land value capture mechanism through its Land Betterment Charge (LBC), which replaced the previous Development Charge system in 2022. The LBC is levied on the increase in land value resulting from government approvals for higher-density or more valuable land uses. Typically, the charge captures 70% of the land value uplift, ensuring that a significant portion of the benefits from public planning decisions is returned to the community.
Denmark
Land Tax: Local municipalities levy a tax on the value of land while property tax is collected at the national level. Land value tax rates are set by the municipality and range from 1.6% to 3.4%. There are specific provisions for reducing the tax on low-income families and seniors.
An important natural experiment occurred whereby municipal boundaries were redrawn and many properties changed tax jurisdictions overnight. It was observed that the new tax rates were nearly perfectly capitalized into the market price of properties, demonstrating the ability for land value taxes to reduce the market price of land.
Estonia
Land Tax: A nationwide tax on the unimproved value of land, used to fund local governments which was adopted in the 1990s (one of the few recent adoptions of LVT). The rates are set by local governments and generally range from 0.1% to 2.5% of the land’s assessed market value. Unlike most jurisdictions, Estonia’s system almost entirely funds its local governments.
Taiwan
Land Value Tax: Applied based on the government-declared value of the land. This is different from market value and allows for the government to place pressure on landholders to achieve other social objectives. The rates are applied progressively not to the property but to the total holdings of the owner or business entity. Rates range from 1% to 5.5%.
Land value increment tax (LVIT): The sale of land is currently subject to LVIT and payable by the seller. The tax is levied on the increase in the government-assessed value of the land during the ownership period, adjusted for inflation, at regular progressive rates ranging from 20% to 40%, or a special rate of 10%.
United States
Split-Rate in Pennsylvania: Some cities like Harrisburg and Pittsburgh adopted split-rate taxation in the 1980s and 90s as a way to combat urban decay and penalize vacant or underutilized land. It applied land tax rate 3 to 5 times the rate of structure taxes in order to incentivize construction. Many cities saw a short and medium term increase in the amount of construction in their downtowns as well as commensurate increases in capital and business investment.
The city of Detroit has proposed a similar system, marketing it as a way to reduce taxes on the majority of homeowners.
New York State is considering an LVT pilot program, which would allow up to five municipalities to tax land at a higher rate than buildings.
England
Transit-Based Land Value Capture: England uses transit-based land value capture through tools like the Community Infrastructure Levy and Business Rate Supplements—local authorities charge developers near new transit projects to fund infrastructure, while schemes like London’s Crossrail have raised billions by capturing value uplift around stations.
Canada’s Experience with Land Value Taxation
Western Canada: A Pioneering Region
Western Canada has a long history of experimenting with land value taxation (LVT) as a way to fund local government and promote efficient land use. In the early 20th century, around two-thirds of municipalities in British Columbia, all municipalities in Alberta, and about a quarter in Saskatchewan levied taxes solely on land, exempting buildings and improvements. Many of the remaining municipalities in these provinces taxed land at higher rates than structures, aiming to reduce speculation and encourage productive development.
Over time, provinces across the region transitioned to uniform property tax systems that taxed land and improvements equally. Despite this shift, Western Canada’s early adoption of land-based taxation remains one of the most extensive in North American history and offers a strong foundation for renewed interest today.
British Columbia: Past Innovation, Modern Momentum
British Columbia was one of the first jurisdictions in Canada to implement land-only taxation at a municipal scale. In 1910, the City of Vancouver adopted a pure land value tax, which remained in place until 1918, when the city transitioned to a hybrid system that included taxes on buildings. By the mid-20th century, B.C., like other provinces, had fully adopted the conventional property tax model.
However, British Columbia remains the most institutionally ready province in Canada to reintroduce LVT today. Its centralized provincial assessment body—BC Assessment—is the only assessment authority in Canada that independently and systematically values land and improvements separately for all properties, and it makes this information publicly accessible. This assessment infrastructure significantly lowers the administrative barriers to implementing LVT or split-rate taxation and makes B.C. a prime candidate for reform.
In 2023, the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) passed a resolution urging the provincial government to restore local authority to implement land value taxation, framing it as a tool to tackle speculative landholding, housing affordability, and uneven tax burdens. Modelling by Common Wealth Canada showed that a land value tax in BC capturing 0.8% of land value could fully replace all major property-related taxes in the province – eliminating municipal and provincial property taxes, property transfer taxes, and the speculation & vacancy tax (SVT).
The Rest of Canada: Limited Use, Growing Interest
Outside of Western Canada, land value taxation has seen more limited application but is not without precedent. In Ontario, several municipalities adopted split-rate property taxation in the early 20th century, taxing land more heavily than improvements. This approach was eventually phased out as provincial law moved toward uniform taxation. However, Toronto retained elements of land-based taxation for select property classes well into the 1950s, and Ottawa explored similar models during that period.
In Nova Scotia, land-based taxation was discussed in the context of mid-century land reform debates, though it was never adopted. Other provinces such as Quebec, Manitoba, and the Atlantic provinces largely followed uniform property tax systems from early on, with minimal experimentation in separating land from improvement values for taxation.
Today, as Canadian municipalities and provinces grapple with challenges like housing supply, land speculation, and municipal revenue constraints, interest is growing in LVT as a tool to improve land use efficiency, reduce unearned windfalls from landholding, and create more stable and equitable public revenues. While Western Canada has the deepest historical ties to the model, there is growing recognition across the country that its benefits could have national relevance.
