system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why is a land value tax considered the "ideal" tax by economists?

Wikipedia says it is considered a perfect tax. I suppose because it encourages the usage of land, is tied to a scarce and limited resource, etc.

But how does it fall out in practice? Does it make for good policy? Why aren't the costs be passed onto tenants (which I have read elsewhere)?
gpt
Taxes on *unimproved* land value are "perfect" in some sense because they are lump sum taxes, and they do not distort decisions on the margin. The reason is that a landowner cannot change the unimproved value of their land.

In contrast, the downside of things like income or sales taxation is that they distort work and purchase decisions away from their optimal values (if they were optimal to start with). Income taxation, for example, disincentivizes work.