About LVT - Land Value Tax Campaign

The damn-nearest run thing

Written on 5 August 2020. Posted in Reducing inequality.

“The damn-nearest run thing you ever saw in your life”, wrote Wellington after the Battle of Waterloo. The same must be said of the 2019 election. However, it just buys another five years, and if the boom-bust cycle runs to schedule, the crash will then be only a year or two away.

Discovering land rental values

Written on 5 August 2020. Posted in Valuations.

One way to discover residential land rental values is to use web sites like Zoopla and find the ‘floor level’ rents. These are in places like the north-east; a three bed semi at Seaham, County Durham, is about £650 pcm. A similar property in BN2 is around £1500 pcm

Who owns the country? The secretive companies hoarding England’s land

Written on 5 August 2020. Posted in Natural justice.

“Multi-million pound corporations with complex structures have purchased the very ground we walk on

What is land?

Written on 27 July 2020. Posted in What is land?.

One argument put forward against LVT is that ‘land’ (in the physical sense) is ‘not so important any more in a modern economy’. The proponent then mentions something like intellectual property rights (copyrights, patents etc), points at a few companies who make large amounts of money from them (Facebook etc) and says that is what we should be taxing. Clearly, in overall...

How much will I pay?

Written on 20 July 2020. Posted in How much will I pay?.

Many people ask this and there is no single, simple answer. The answer depends entirely on which taxes would be replaced. Political reality is what it is, and a modest start in the right direction would be to merge all existing taxes that relate to land and buildings, occupation and wealth generally into a single LVT. The prime candidates for being merged are Council Tax (less Council Tax discounts...

Collection

Written on 20 July 2020. Posted in Collection.

People argue in favour of taxes on earnings and transactions on the basis that cash is changing hands, so that is a good time for the government to take an arbitrary slice. The corresponding argument against LVT (or Council Tax) is that no cash changes hands if somebody is just living in their own home and there is no cash flow for the government to take its share. That flies in the face of the...

The Transition

Written on 20 July 2020. Posted in Transition.

We live in the real world and accept that it would take a decade or more to phase in LVT and phase out most other taxes. This is not all-or-nothing and can be done in stages. Every small step in the right direction is a step in the right direction, even if we never “get there”. We have explained the main stages and running order for the transition under the heading “How much will I pay?” Replacing...

Valuations

Written on 20 July 2020. Posted in Valuations.

There are of course lots of ways in which valuations can be carried out, all with their advantages and disadvantages. We have mentioned many of these below. None is perfect, but taxes are all to some extent arbitrary and have their hard edges. The basic principle of funding government out of charges on the resulting rental values is far more important than the precise details. Business Rates valuations...

Taxes Compared

Written on 20 July 2020. Posted in Taxes compared.

The distinction between ‘local’ and ‘national’ services is highly artificial, to all intents and purposes, the UK has one single national tax-raising system; even supposed ‘local’ taxes like Council Tax or Business Rates are dictated by UK-wide rules (these are diverging slightly for Wales and Scotland, Northern Ireland retained Domestic Rates and does not use...

Oxbridge College riches

Written on 29 May 2018. Posted in What is land?.

An ill-informed article in The Guardian draws attention to the “riches” held by Oxbridge colleges – £21 billion, according the report, “Guardian study reveals how wealth of nearly 70 colleges is held in estates, endowments and artworks“. The mischief and disinformation is the aggregation of estates, buildings and artworks under the title of “assets”. The...

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