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Originally Posted by you&me
But AFAIK, nothing else is taxed like that. Highest and best use taxation would be a nightmare for basically anyone not in a highrise apartment or office tower, not just golf courses.
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Vancouver bases taxes on highest and best use, and it works. If you are a property owner who doesn't have the capital to develop your property to the highest and best use, you are incentivized to sell it to somebody who does. It's expensive to be a nail house.
The media writes a bunch of articles about how it's a nightmare for commercial tenants when they're paying property taxes for a property far greater than what they're renting because the taxes are passed to them through "triple net leases", but the problem in that scenario is actually that the lease makes them responsible for the taxation cost of upzoning while the property owner gets the benefit. The small business associations should be taking point on getting tenants to reject triple net leases and sign something based on the market value of the space they're renting instead.