The Lincoln Institute is committed to strengthening land-based financing to support public services in order to effectuate a key insight of economist Henry George: there is a crucial public role in private land ownership.
Our work supports efficient and equitable methods of taxation and the use of land-based financing tools to supply a full range of public services, from social housing to investment in climate resilience measures. We provide public officials with the tools and training to improve community welfare through fiscal policy, including modern methods of valuation, new techniques for gauging the land value increment due to public investment, and case studies of successful implementation of these approaches. We also publish extensive databases that allow comparison of alternate approaches to land-based taxation, covering state-by-state property tax features and local finance measures across many categories of revenue.