Introduction to the Campaign

The Campaign was founded in 1986 as a single-issue non-party/all-party organisation based in the UK, and was active for the following 20 years. This website is retained as an archive of the material produced during that period, including submissions in response to government enquiries. There is a body of other material on the theory and implementation of LVT, including topics which are not readily available elsewhere on the internet.

The Campaign was advocate for the collection of the rental value of land, for use as the principal source of public revenue, as a replacement for present taxes on wages, profits, goods and services. This policy is a prerequisite if chronic economic problems are to be eliminated.

How? Nearly every country in the world is affected by poverty and unemployment; widening divisions between rich and poor; boom-slump cycles; housing shortages; inadequate infrastructure; and damage to the environment. These economic ills persist, seemingly intractably, despite unprecedented developments in science and technology. All of them are ultimately related to the different economic behaviour of ‘land’ in contrast to man-made consumer and capital goods, whose supply can be, and normally is, varied and transported in response to demand.

Land is otherwise. No more can be made: each plot of land is unique and immovable. Its total supply is fixed. Consequently, the market in land behaves differently from the market in products. Land value comes from the natural and man-made advantages of location, which derive from the presence and activities of the community as a whole.

It follows that the value of land, its rent, is peculiarly suitable as the basic source of public revenue. This is not really taxation, but payment for the right to occupy land and enjoy the benefits of occupation; however, the policy is usually known as “Land Value Taxation” It operates as an annual charge on the rental value of land, assuming that each site was in its optimum permitted use. Since the idea cuts across all political divisions, the Campaign had no party political affiliations.