I'm aware of the taxpayer perspective and it's a big problem with getting adoption for an LVT. It's the type of policy that makes most people better off but you can never really convince people to adopt, because it sounds worse than alternatives.
There's actually an economic theorem (the "Henry George Theorem", discovered by Joseph Stiglitz in 1977 [1]) that states that under conditions of democracy & perfect information an LVT will exactly "right size" the government, spurring investment in only those public goods that pay for themselves in increased citizen welfare. That's because the tax revenues from public good expenditures come back in the form of increased rents: a playground nearby, a subway stop, better schools, low crime, stable currency, a strong military, etc. all increase the amount of rent that a landlord can charge for a property within their jurisdiction. That rent then comes back to benefit the exact same people who are paying the tax, which removes the principal-agent problem inherent in most taxes (where you pay the taxes but it benefits your neighbor). Landlords have an incentive to raise taxes on themselves right up to the point where the public improvement fails to raise rents by more than its cost. Tenants have the same incentive - as long as the cost is less than the public benefit, they get to enjoy the benefit, their rent will raise by the cost (as landlords pass along the tax), and they end up better off. When costs rise more than benefits (as they seemingly have in SF), people leave the expensive jurisdiction and move to areas that have more smartly allocated their tax dollars.
The main problem in practice is that you can always direct people's attention to small problems that don't raise their welfare in aggregate much - saving the burrowing owls, for example, or banning abortion. The economist's answer is that this will eventually even out across many people and many municipalities, but I think we have pretty ample evidence that people are not necessarily rational beings, and an LVT isn't all that robust to irrationality.
There's actually an economic theorem (the "Henry George Theorem", discovered by Joseph Stiglitz in 1977 [1]) that states that under conditions of democracy & perfect information an LVT will exactly "right size" the government, spurring investment in only those public goods that pay for themselves in increased citizen welfare. That's because the tax revenues from public good expenditures come back in the form of increased rents: a playground nearby, a subway stop, better schools, low crime, stable currency, a strong military, etc. all increase the amount of rent that a landlord can charge for a property within their jurisdiction. That rent then comes back to benefit the exact same people who are paying the tax, which removes the principal-agent problem inherent in most taxes (where you pay the taxes but it benefits your neighbor). Landlords have an incentive to raise taxes on themselves right up to the point where the public improvement fails to raise rents by more than its cost. Tenants have the same incentive - as long as the cost is less than the public benefit, they get to enjoy the benefit, their rent will raise by the cost (as landlords pass along the tax), and they end up better off. When costs rise more than benefits (as they seemingly have in SF), people leave the expensive jurisdiction and move to areas that have more smartly allocated their tax dollars.
The main problem in practice is that you can always direct people's attention to small problems that don't raise their welfare in aggregate much - saving the burrowing owls, for example, or banning abortion. The economist's answer is that this will eventually even out across many people and many municipalities, but I think we have pretty ample evidence that people are not necessarily rational beings, and an LVT isn't all that robust to irrationality.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem