Land tax could fix economy AND solve housing crisis.

[chem1st]

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/development/land-tax-could-trigger-house-building-revolution/6526820.article

 

A left-wing think tank has launched a paper today calling for a land value tax to help deliver a ‘house-building revolution’.

 

The Centre for Labour and Social Studies suggests a land value tax could replace business rates and stamp duty, and should be levied on all land except where it lies under people’s homes.

 

‘Very wealthy homeowners should pay, but those with limited incomes could defer payment where required,’ the report In land revenue: The case for a land value tax in the UK states.

 

It continues: ‘A land value tax, targeted at unproductive wealth and speculation, could help deliver the house building revolution – and the economic revival – our country desperately needs.’

 

The paper says the tax should end land speculation which means higher land prices and a lack of land for building.

 

Because there is currently no tax on empty land in the UK it can be lucrative to acquire it and hold onto it and then sell it at a higher value, the report says.

 

A land value tax, set at the right level, would encourage efficient use of land and heighten the prospect of the reuse of brownfield sites, the paper suggests. It says it could also moderate house price inflation and reduce the likelihood of future housing bubbles.

 

Andy Hull, the author of the paper, said: ‘Introducing a land value tax here will take political courage. It will mean facing down vested interests, not least the big land-banking developers who deliberately drip-feed properties onto the market, making large profits on small volumes of output, even though they have the land and the country desperately needs more homes.

 

‘It will take a manifesto commitment, a real mandate, and no doubt a battle in parliament. But, at least in some sense, this land is ours. And our tax system should reflect that fact.’

 

Class is a new think tank established in 2012 by unions Unite and GMB and the Institute of Employment Rights.

 

A land tax would solve many of the structural problems in our economy, and encourage productive business, instead of rentier parasitism.

 

Houses could be built, rather than used as speculative investments.

[Sid Umpley]

thread title should start with

 

left wing think tank says.

[Green Web]

thread title should start with

 

left wing think tank says.

 

Left or right think tank is irrelevant, the point is Chem1st and Insider Housing are 100% correct, as was Churchill (a Tory) back in 1909

 

"Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived ... the unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done."

[mafya]

I have empty properties that I pay council tax and business rates for even though they are empty, this is a form of land tax is it not?

[Green Web]

No, the regressive nature of council tax is not representative of what the land is worth.

[mafya]

No, the regressive nature of council tax is not representative of what the land is worth.

 

When we sell it we pay tax on any increase in value, land tax is not going to solve the housing crisis its just another way to fleece people.

[cuttsie]

There will never be a land tax in England as long as we are ruled by Public schoolboys.

They are part of and representatives of the Land owners.

[Mecky]

What housing crisis?

[Jeffrey Shaw]

There will never be a land tax in England as long as we are ruled by Public schoolboys.

They are part of and representatives of the Land owners.

Alternatively: there is already a land tax in the UK.

Applying to just about any owner except an owner-occupier of residential premises, it's called Capital Gains Tax.