Hasn’t Land Value Tax been tried and failed?

Land Value Taxation has been tried four times and failed. This is presumably a reference to the Betterment Charges in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and the other three items of legislation referred to elsewhere on this site.  These taxes were doomed to failure from the start, and are not what the Campaign is advocating.

These so-called land taxes were heavily criticised at the time by our predecessor organisations. The failed taxes were charges for planning permissions and could never have worked. The idea was revived a couple of years ago in the shape of the Planning Gain Supplement. That too was dropped, but not before much time and money had been wasted in drafting the legislation. The Campaign supports something entirely different, the collection of land rent for public revenue, by means of an annual charge on annual rental values. There is no difficulty in carrying out an assessment of site rental values – the Valuation Office Agency have most of this information already as it is used to compile the UBR valuation lists. There is no difficulty in obtaining a list of land holders – most of this information is already held by the Land Registry. All that is necessary is to sent out invoices for the correct amounts, as already happens with Council Tax and UBR charges, which the land value tax would replace. Where is the difficulty?