Comment - Land Value Tax Campaign

House prices to soar by 16%

Written on 31 May 2011. Posted in Home-Owner-Ism.

So screams the main headline on the front page of today’s Daily Express, over an article quoting a study by a think-tank called the “Centre for Economics and Business Research”. Reading down the article, it is evident that this is attributable to what is referred to as loose monetary policy – in other words inflation. The article goes on to assure readers that it is not...

Railways debate erupts again

Written on 22 May 2011. Posted in Public Transport.

The McNulty committee has produced a 350 page report on whether Britain’s railways give value for money and how things might be improved. Proposed changes to fares have naturally received the most attention and comment. Matters are, however, more subtle. The railways have suffered from a series of bad technical and engineering decisions since the mid-1950s, in part due to political interference....

Spat with Tax Justice Network again

Written on 16 May 2011. Posted in Taxation.

Our relationship with the Tax Justice Network (TJN) is not what it ought to be. One might have thought that they would be foremost in leading a clamour for our promotion of land rent for public revenue. Instead, the approval is grudging. The most TJN will concede is to see it as “part of a comprehensive system of taxation”. But if LVT is part of a comprehensive tax system, which other...

Mansion tax proposal demolished

Written on 15 May 2011. Posted in Taxation.

Vince Cable has revived his idea for a mansion tax. It (the tax, not the mansion) is demolished here.

Rents pressure forces retail closures

Written on 15 May 2011. Posted in Economics.

Growing numbers of high street retailers are at loggerheads with the landlords of their shops, threatening to abandon hundreds of stores when leases end in the coming years unless hefty rental discounts are granted. Mothercare has announced closure of 110 stores, music retailer HMV announced in January it would cut 60 stores from its UK network, while electrical retailers Comet and Dixons have also...

Joining up the news – or where did the money go?

Written on 14 May 2011. Posted in Economics.

We are told that the banks (in Ireland and elsewhere) lent money to speculators to enable them to buy land at inflated prices. When prices dipped, the speculators went bust, the banks had to be helped by the taxpayer, and took on board the remaining assets of the speculators. However, what was not much reported was the enormous sums of money received by the sellers of land in the boom that preceded...

A taxing question

Written on 13 May 2011. Posted in Taxation.

Tax avoidance has been in the news lately, with campaigns and demonstrations being run by organisations such as UK UNCUT. But what are the best places to avoid paying tax?

Down to brass tax

Written on 13 May 2011. Posted in General.

The Latin dictionary defines the verb, taxo, taxare, as to estimate, rate, appraise the value of anything. In modern English, this is still the meaning in the courts of law, where a taxing master is one who taxes costs by examining them and allowing or disallowing the various component items claimed. A wider use of the word has largely taken over from the strict, etymological meaning, so that taxation...

No win for UK

Written on 6 May 2011. Posted in Politics.

A win for the Alternative Vote (Yes) could have opened the door to other political groupings that could present other ways of looking at the world than the received ones. So in the long run it might have helped change things for the better. With the two party system entrenched for a least a generation, political discourse will remain locked down whilst both groupings collude in sustaining the false...

Liberals’ well-deserved battering at polls

Written on 6 May 2011. Posted in Politics.

The Liberals’ battering at yesterday’s election should give LVT supporters no pleasure, but it is well-deserved. Given the first serious taste of government since the end of World War One, they failed utterly to present the party’s distinctive philosophy. LVT, together with free trade, was an important component of that. Even today, two members of the cabinet claim to be LVT advocates,...

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