I believe that a sales tax, although difficult to enfore, reduces the trend of consumption and waste by pricing items higher. A property tax is not based on land, but rather the "property value", something difficult to define. I support this new tax system.
If a property tax encourages people to move, it should tax land area, not "property value".
Except the sales tax does not tax consumption and waste, it taxes value. So it creates no incentive whatsoever to switch to using your money to buy more non-wasteful goods and services, since you get taxed just the same no matter what. As for property taxes, I agree, they should be based on land, although an externality tax on buildings based on their volume or number of units to compensate for the increased road use such buildings create, noise pollution and increased effort needed by the police to defend the property due to the greater stealable wealth contained inside would make economic sense to add on top. It would also end the bureaucracy of requiring people to supplicate their local community to allow them to develop land on a case by case basis, since you can just pay the tax and you're done.
