To be clear, you can’t tax land. You tax people (or corporations), calculating the amount based on land, secured by your ability to (re)take their land. But more importantly, my question wasn’t “why tax land”, but “why not tax everything?” michaelcohen had a pretty good answer for this—land is a better target than most assets because it’s difficult to hide and not subject to removal from the tax jurisdiction.
Basically, land is easily found and threatened by the tax authority (for both physical and historical reasons).
To be clear, you can’t tax land. You tax people (or corporations), calculating the amount based on land, secured by your ability to (re)take their land. But more importantly, my question wasn’t “why tax land”, but “why not tax everything?” michaelcohen had a pretty good answer for this—land is a better target than most assets because it’s difficult to hide and not subject to removal from the tax jurisdiction.
Basically, land is easily found and threatened by the tax authority (for both physical and historical reasons).