----- Original Message ----- 
  Polly Cleveland  wrote

  Please, whether we're fur or agin land taxation, let's not get hung up on 
  feasibility of separating land from buildings. Here in New York City, the 
  Empire State Building and the land under it belong to different investors. 
  As any professional appraiser will tell you, it is very easy to estimate 
  land values: just take sales of vacant or run-down property, and 
  extrapolate. I myself once mapped land in downtown San Francisco. In 
  Australia, where they take land taxes seriously, assessors can predict 
  selling prices to within plus or minus 10%. Try getting that kind of 
  accuracy in estimating income for tax purposes!


This fascinating thread has branched in two directions.  One on forms of ownership and the other on taxation.  This query is addressed to the list generally, not just Polly.  Her post simply provided the springboard.

Regardless, I think, of the relationship of sovereign to the "land" or the form of distribution, there is the commonly recognized basket or bundle of rights.  And the control of the individual rights (by perpetual ownership, some limited tenure lease or license, easement or otherwise) can indeed be apportioned or allocated.  The Empire State Building is a textbook case.  Just uptown, I think Columbia University still owns the land under Rockefeller Center.  Continue North to the Bronx and the Knights of Columbus may still own the land under Yankee Stadium.  And lots of Manhattan high rises are built on the "air rights" actually associated with other parcels of land.  And as others describe, in mining states subsurface mineral rights are often separately held.  

I'm still unclear how a so called "single land tax" really makes a difference.  I earlier observed that in single ownership the same operator was paying the aggregate bill regardless of how it was apportioned between land and building.  Typically the buildings are considered real property and taxed as real property (notwithstanding a classical economic distinction between land and capital improvements).  If ownership is split, there may be two tax bills: one to buildings and one to land.  If only land is taxed and the scheme is revenue neutral isn't the portion attributable to the buildings going to fall to the land and be recovered in the ground rent paid by the building owner to the land owner?

Scott Cullen