At last, a piece from TJN in support of LVT with no ifs and buts. We hope now that TJN will stop talking about LVT as part of a balanced package of taxes. Of course LVT cannot replace all existing taxes at a stroke and it will need a bedding-in period of several years whilst all the harmful and avoidable taxes are phased out. And there will probably always be a place for “sin taxes”,...

There is a big hoo-ha in the papers today about government departments using consultants “employed” by service companies so as to avoid tax liabilities. It apparently skirts close to the borderline between avoidance and evasion. Humbug. No-one who has ever paid their plumber, builder or car mechanic cash-in-hand has any right to complain. That must mean nearly all of us. The customer...

Professional anti-tax-haven agitator, Richard Murphy, has just published a book on the subject. No doubt it is a fascinating read. But Murphy knows perfectly well that a switch from present taxes to land value taxation would put the tax havens out of business, yet he has never said so clearly and unabiguously. Tax havens are the product of a rotten tax system. If the bucket leaks it is up to the...

A video on the website of Tax Justice Network, from Democracy Now, goes into lots of detail about the damage done by tax havens, pointing out that both Britain and the UK are themselves important players in this game. The only thing is that the speakers fail to draw the most obvious of conclusions – that there must be something wrong with the tax systems themselves if they leave all these...

We are delighted to see that Tax Justice Network is starting to coming round to the same view as ourselves, due to hard and tactful work by a few people, in particular, Carol Wilcox of the Labour Land Campaign, who has been patiently putting the LVT case. One of the fruits of these efforts is in recent postings on the TJN blog. Another is the latest edition of Tax Justice Focus, which is all about...

There is an interesting piece from Tax Justice on the difficulties of taxing land in Africa. The problem is, it argues, “the concentration of land assets in the hands of political elites and small land-owning classes, much of which has been acquired through corrupt means”. Just like nearly everywhere else, then. It is a pity that influential campaigns such as Jubilee 2000 never mentioned...

It is good to be able to say something complimentary about Tax Justice for once. They have given a good write-up to the International Union’s April conference on their website in an article headed “Why is so much wealth in the hands of so few?“

It has been suggested that the various movements with an interest in LVT, including the Campaign, should work together with the Tax Justice Network (TJN). On the face of things, this is an excellent idea. TJN’s main concern is tax avoidance, and since LVT cannot be avoided or evaded, there is obvious scope for collaboration. Or so one would have thought. The brains behind TJN, John Christensen,...

Useful ammunition for the LVT case can always be obtained from Tax Justice Network and Tax Research. But both have come under attack lately from the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, where there is anger about their activities. TJN is headed by John Christensen, and is a campaign against tax avoidance and tax havens. The website has the title “Tax havens cause poverty” – a questionable...

So some economists would have us believe. Richard Murphy, who runs the Tax Research web site and was interviewed on the radio earlier this week, is all in favour of it. A self-proclaimed Keynsian, he argues that the economy will grind to a standstill if prices are falling. This makes no sense.