Originally Posted by
Ged
It would work in some cases.
But...
Landowner A. Hit with this tax for his bomb site will want to improve it as he'll be taxed no more for doing so. This is a case for it working.
Landowner B. Hit with this tax for his bomb site will not improve it even if he wanted to as he has no money to do so so will sell it or lose it to the council who don't tax themselves so until someone like landowner A comes along with enough money to warrant improving it, it will sit as a makeshift car park like Tithebarn street. A case for it not working.
Which will not be too long in most cases unless a full blown recession comes along. Some land owners are just bad businessmen and no idea of how to maximise the potential of the land. Some companies just own land and don't care. A swift tax soon get them moving and they improve or sell.
Look at the links I gave, Lots of examples of great success. Hong Kong for one. Liverpool council wanted to implement it. Westminster would not have it. Political as the Libs nearly introduced it with Winston Churchill in 1909. The Libs are generally in favour of it.
If brought in retrospectively, i'm sure current landowners would fight it.
They have always fought it like crazy. Well the landed gentry have. The 1909 House of Lord reforms came about as LVT was to be introduced. That meant their super-rich gravy-train may come to a halt. The Lords opposed it strongly to the point the house was reformed. They were more of a self interest group then than now. The next reforms were by Tony Blair.
Brought in on any new land sales it would surely discourage those who buy old property and sit on it hoping for a big kill to a developer whilst the building collapses around them as in the case of Iliad/Jamaica House or the owners of the site on Park Road that collapsed last week.
I don't quite see your point. If it discourages people buying land to sit on it and not improve the property on it (the bricks) that is a good thing, which I think you are saying. LVT is for all land - a tax on its value. The value of the "land" in one street may be less than the next. There may be 20 superb houses in a road and the Land value is rates as x. One house has been neglected and empty, but still pays the land value of x. Today that is not the case. An empty house pays far less.
LVT is a superb tax. Corporation tax still applies as LVT will not bring in enough taxes. Although LVT would reduce the burden of the states expenditure, so a reduced Corporation tax.
Coupled with relaxed planning laws (only 7.5% of the UK is settled and 5% of that is parks and gardens) the lifestyle of the people will rise and unemployment reduced as the construction industry, and its material suppliers, would be far larger and much more stable with few, or no, construction boom and busts.
The bricks on the land would always constantly be improved.
Liverpool is screaming out for LVT. Well the whole country is. Henry George was one clever fella.
Here is what these people, you may have heard of some of them, say about the injustice of most of the land being in the hands of a parasitic few effecting the people and the economy in a detrimental way. Probably all a bunch of effing commies the lot of them. I must say:--
- Andrew Carnegie
The most comfortable, but also the most unproductive, way for a capitalist to increase his fortune is to put all his monies in sites and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has to pay his price.
- Andrew Carnegie
Land should be taxed as much as possible, and improvements as little as possible.
- David Lloyd George
Who ordained that the few should have the land of Britain as a perquisite; who made 10,000 people owners of the soil, and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865):
The land, the earth that God gave to man for his home, his sustenance and support, should never be the possession of any man, corporation, society or unfriendly government, any more than the air or water - if as much. An individual or enterprise requiring land should hold no more in their own right than is needed for their home and sustenance, and never more than they have in actual use in the prudent management of their legitimate business, and this much should not be permitted when it creates an exclusive monopoly. All that is not so used should be held for the free use of every family to make homesteads, and to hold them so long as they are occupied. A reform like this will be worked out some time in the future. "
- George Orwell:
"Except for the few surviving commons, the high roads, the lands of the National Trust, and the sea shore below the high-tide mark, every square inch of England is 'owned' by a few thousand families. These people are just about as useful as so many tapeworms. It is desirable that people should own their own dwelling houses, and it is probably desirable that a farmer should own as much land as he can actually farm. But the ground-landlord in a town area has no function and no excuse for existence. He is merely a person who has found a way of milking the public while giving nothing in return. He causes rents to be higher, he makes town planning more difficult, and he excludes children from green spaces: that is literally all that he does, except to draw his income"
What Winston Churchill said:-----
"Land differs from all other forms of property."
"The Manchester Ship Canal and unearned increments.
Now let the Manchester Ship Canal tell its tale about the land. It has a story to tell which is just as simple and just as pregnant as its story about Free Trade. When it was resolved to build the Canal, the first thing that had to be done was to buy the land. Before the resolution to build the Canal was taken, the land on which the Canal flows - or perhaps I should say 'stands' - was, in the main, agricultural land, paying rates on an assessment from 30s. to ?2 an acre. I am told that 4,495 acres of land purchased fell within that description out of something under 5,000 purchased altogether. Immediately after the decision, the 4,495 acres were sold for ?777,000 sterling - or an average of ?172 an acre - that is to say, five or six times the agricultural value of the land and the value on which it had been rated for public purposes.
Now what had the landowner done for the community; what enterprise had he shown; what service had he rendered; what capital had he risked in order that he should gain this enormous multiplication of the value of his property! I will tell you in one word what he had done. Can you guess it! Nothing."
Churchill goes on...about LVT....
"Tax on capital value of undeveloped land.
But there is another proposal concerning land values which is not less important. I mean the tax on the capital value of undeveloped urban or suburban land. The income derived from land and its rateable value under the present law depend upon the use to which the land is put, consequently income and rateable value are not always true or complete measures of the value of the land. Take the case to which I have already referred of the man who keeps a large plot in or near a growing town idle for years while it is ripening - that is to say, while it is rising in price through the exertions of the surrounding community and the need of that community for more room to live.
Take that case. I dare say you have formed your own opinion upon it. Mr Balfour, Lord Lansdowne, and the Conservative Party generally, think that is an admirable arrangement. They speak of the profits of the land monopolist as if they were the fruits of thrift and industry and a pleasing example for the poorer classes to imitate. We do not take that view of the process. We think it is a dog-in-the-manger game. We see the evil, we see the imposture upon the public, and we see the consequences in crowded slums, in hampered commerce, in distorted or restricted development, and in congested centres of population, and we say here and now to the land monopolist who is holding up his land - and the pity is it was not said before - you shall judge for yourselves whether it is a fair offer or not.
We say to the land monopolist: 'This property of yours might be put to immediate use with general advantage. It is at this minute saleable in the market at ten times the value at which it is rated. If you choose to keep it idle in the expectation of still further unearned increment, then at least you shall be taxed at the true selling value in the meanwhile."
Introduction to Gerorgism:
http://www.progress.org/cgo/cwho.html
In the UK you don't actually own land, the state does, you only have the "title" which can be sold on. Henry George came up with a system that encourages productive use of land. That means people can still "own" land, but the proceed of its production would be more evenly spread - he devised LVT.
LAND VALUE TAX (LVT)
Henry George, an American, the man who devised LVT, initially proposed government ownership of all land, as the people owned it anyhow. Getting it across and accepted would have been virtually impossible. If you say, redistribute land, people cry, ?communism, taking away from me what is mine". Henry George realised that people will not accept that you cannot own land. It is in the western worlds, especially the Anglo Saxon, psyche. That is where LVT excels. Own land by all means, but if you own half of Scotland just to shoot birds on, tax will be due on that land, which currently is not the case. LVT will force large landowners to sell land and not hoard it. It will also encourage them to make productive use of the land; if they cannot then they sell it to someone who can make productive use of it.
LVT taxes only the "value" of the land, which is based on the market value of the land. LVT, regards property as the items on the land, not the land itself. Someone in northern Scotland on one acre will pay very little as the land is not worth so much. Someone in central London with one acre pays substantially more.
LVT does not tax an individuals labour, and hence their productivity, which the current system does, holding back advancement.
Currently people's labour and lifestyle is taxed. The more you work, the more tax you pay - as disincentive to work hard. If I build a nice extension to my house so my family can enjoy and improve their quality of life, the council tax is raised. Totally ludicrous. There may be two one-acre plots side by side. I want to build an eight-roomed house for my family to enjoy and the man next door a two-bedroom bungalow, so he can enjoy the land for gardening. Under the current system, I pay more than next door in council tax. Under LVT we pay the same as the bricks on the land is not regarded as taxable, only the land is. A large house creates jobs in building the structure and ongoing maintenance, yet the current system suppresses job creation and curtails the quality of life by penalising people who build larger houses. The word large is all relevant. A large house in the UK would be an average house in the USA.
Denmark and Sweden, and some Australian states use LVT, although none as a single tax. LVT is one of the reasons why Hong Kong and Singapore were able to have very low income tax rates and places of opportunity for those who worked hard and make money. Some US cities are now using a dual rate tax, with property taxes being based solely on the land values. Harrisburgh in Virginia is using LVT to finance transport infrastructure.
LVT spreads the proceeds of a society?s productivity more evenly than at present. It does not penalise a person?s effort to advance.
?Land should be taxed as much as possible, and improvements as little as possible.? - Milton Friedman (economist)
"In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago." - Milton Friedman (economist)
?I have made speeches by the yard on the subject of land-value taxation, and you know what a supporter I am of that policy.? - Winston Churchill
When Henry George died 100,000 people turned up for his funeral. A man the rich and powerful have tried to air-brush from history. His views are getting stronger around the world.
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