FAQs and objections - Land Value Tax Campaign

Land doesn’t matter in this age of technology

Written on 12 January 2009. Posted in Land is not important.

Land doesn’t matter any more, people often say. This is the sort of comment we often receive…Are you stuck in the 17th century or something? Land doesn’t mean an awful lot when food can be shipped in cheap from Africa and your entire business is an office.

Surely land doesn’t matter any more?

Written on 31 December 2008. Posted in Land is not important.

The argument goes like this… Land does not determine production of non-organic goods. Since we discovered fossil fuels we have had a mineral energy source that can produce huge amounts of energy and does not have to be grown, like wood has to. With an unlimited supply of energy and materials (for the last two hundred years and maybe another 50) the West was able to industrialise, and land...

LVT would be unfair to savers who had invested in land

Written on 27 December 2008. Posted in Land is wealth.

We sometimes come across the objection that LVT would be unfair to people who had chosen to put their savings into property. A question that came up recently was that, “People like me who have chosen to put their savings into a property, and it is the main, if not only source of their pension, would seemingly see this pension whittled away by such a tax. It would unfairly advantage those on...

Wouldn’t most people be against an ongoing tax on their property?

Written on 1 December 2008. Posted in FAQs.

Very few people own both the land on which they conduct their businesses and the land on which their homes stands. Most pay rent or work for wages. So having to pay tax on land is no big issue for most people. What is an issue for nearly everyone is having to pay tax on the products of their labour – on honest work.

Wouldn’t LVT encourage overdevelopment?

Written on 1 December 2008. Posted in Planning and construction.

Nobody is proposing that the planning system be abolished, and planning control is a major constraint on tall buildings. But it is the lack of a land value tax that leads to persistent attempts to put up tall buildings, often in unsuitable locations with poor access. This is because so much land is underused or unused, that an artificial shortage is created which makes it economically viable to...

Hasn’t Land Value Tax been tried and failed?

Written on 16 November 2008. Posted in Practicalities.

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...

Some Marxist objections answered

Written on 14 November 2008. Posted in Land is not important.

This recent comment in the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section recently raises some Marxist objections which are answered below. Ricardo could only analy se capitalism in the limited context of bourgeois categories. He saw no fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system only competition between capitalists and workers and between workers themselves. He saw no need to...

Arguments against LVT

Written on 28 September 2008. Posted in Business and farming.

Some comments from somebody who had a look at What is LVT? What can one say?

Shouldn’t taxes be based on ability to pay?

Written on 3 September 2008. Posted in Ability to pay.

The case for Income Tax, both national and local, is that it is based on ‘Ability to pay”. It is a flawed concept, for it takes little account of how the taxpayer has come by his ability. In any case, present-day taxes supposedly based on ability to pay are frequently unfair or worse.

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