Watling completely misses out the effects of the 1909 Town and Country Planning Act, which was key to the drop in housing before the Liberals applied their LVT
Additionally, I think we can look to more examples of a successful LVT, like Estonia or Copenhagen
The rise in house prices during the covid stamp duty holiday shows the incidence of SDLT falls almost entirely on the property owner (as one would expect when supply is inelastic), so while switching from a transaction tax to a yearly property tax would be more efficient I don't think it alone would affect wealth distribution (which would require planning reform).
It’s a seductive offer, capturing unearned value, incentivising enterprise by replacing taxes which bear on that and improving land use. But all the mechanisms to achieve these outcomes have lots of moving parts. Think of the Community Land Act of the 1970s. Even effective section 106 agreements are rarely simple. And a valuation process to support LVT which is fair and transparent will be challenging. Look how often rating revaluations have been postponed, cancelled or rigged in some way. I spent some time imagining how these problems might be overcome. I reached the cynical conclusion that they probably can’t. To many convicted zelouts and too much complexity seems often to be fatal. But perhaps I just a cynical retired civil servant.
Pleasantly shocked to see an article expounding the benefits of LVT in Pimlico Journal.
(But what is “real estate?”🇺🇸)
Good article Francis, but a few things I think you might have included
As I wrote about here: https://open.substack.com/pub/danlewis8/p/land-value-taxes-in-the-real-world?r=grzc0&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay
Watling completely misses out the effects of the 1909 Town and Country Planning Act, which was key to the drop in housing before the Liberals applied their LVT
Additionally, I think we can look to more examples of a successful LVT, like Estonia or Copenhagen
The rise in house prices during the covid stamp duty holiday shows the incidence of SDLT falls almost entirely on the property owner (as one would expect when supply is inelastic), so while switching from a transaction tax to a yearly property tax would be more efficient I don't think it alone would affect wealth distribution (which would require planning reform).
It’s a seductive offer, capturing unearned value, incentivising enterprise by replacing taxes which bear on that and improving land use. But all the mechanisms to achieve these outcomes have lots of moving parts. Think of the Community Land Act of the 1970s. Even effective section 106 agreements are rarely simple. And a valuation process to support LVT which is fair and transparent will be challenging. Look how often rating revaluations have been postponed, cancelled or rigged in some way. I spent some time imagining how these problems might be overcome. I reached the cynical conclusion that they probably can’t. To many convicted zelouts and too much complexity seems often to be fatal. But perhaps I just a cynical retired civil servant.