>How do you tax companies which rent their office/production space?
You don't, you tax whoever owns the land they rent and the landowner will charge rent commensurate with the expenses he incurs (including tax) by owning the land.
>Isn't taxing land punishing companies planning for growth? It is not uncommon to buy/rent spaces which you don't need now but you know will be needed in the future?
This is already the status quo, though, except now you 'punish' corporations and people for succeeding (making a profit on investments, earning a high income etc.). I don't know how to rigorously decide whether it's worse to punish someone for owning land or to punish them for owning things that aren't land, or to punish them for being personally useful to other people (i.e. profiting from their skills and effort rather than from property that is in their name), but intuitively it seems to me that punishing, and thereby discouraging people from being useful is the worst, while punishing people for owning things is not as bad. I'm not sure how society looks when people are adverse to owning land.
>How do you deal with real estate investors?
In what sense would you have to deal with them? Their investments presumably lose most of their value if all present taxes are converted into one (high) land tax.
>How do you tax companies which rent their office/production space?
You don't, you tax whoever owns the land they rent and the landowner will charge rent commensurate with the expenses he incurs (including tax) by owning the land.
>Isn't taxing land punishing companies planning for growth? It is not uncommon to buy/rent spaces which you don't need now but you know will be needed in the future?
This is already the status quo, though, except now you 'punish' corporations and people for succeeding (making a profit on investments, earning a high income etc.). I don't know how to rigorously decide whether it's worse to punish someone for owning land or to punish them for owning things that aren't land, or to punish them for being personally useful to other people (i.e. profiting from their skills and effort rather than from property that is in their name), but intuitively it seems to me that punishing, and thereby discouraging people from being useful is the worst, while punishing people for owning things is not as bad. I'm not sure how society looks when people are adverse to owning land.
>How do you deal with real estate investors?
In what sense would you have to deal with them? Their investments presumably lose most of their value if all present taxes are converted into one (high) land tax.