From the BBC, quoting John Prescott circa 2004:
"We own the land; it's a valuable public asset. We don't need to sell it off. We can keep it in trust and we can lease it for essential housing. So the first-time buyer pays the cost of building a home but not the full market cost of the land, [and it's the cost of the land] which is helping to make it impossible for our people to buy those houses."
Funny use of the word "helping" but if you think about what he said, that looks like Land Value Tax to me. It's the ultimate shared ownership scheme - you pay for the bricks and mortar outright and pay rent for the location value, i.e. the value of those services which society in general provides for "free" to the occupier of any particular site.
It's a risk free operation to the purchaser, because if the location becomes less desirable, your tax/rent goes down and vice versa, and it puts the council or the government in the position of a conscientious land lord - if they want more money they have to make their borough or the whole of the UK are more desirable place to live (=> more coppers, fewer council chief executives on six-figure salaries) or do business (=> the government could use the rental income to start reducing VAT and Employer's NIC).
Via TenYears at HPC.
Was it all worth it?
3 hours ago
6 comments:
Living next door to gob shite is going to be cheap, is it not?
S, you get what you pay for.
There was a lot of odd stuff going on in the early days of New Labour.
Gordon Brown said" I will not allow house prices to get out of control and put at risk the sustainability of the recovery "in 1997 Budget speech.Prescott was talking wildly about Land Value Taxes in JUne 2003 see"Prescott plans new land tax" (Observer) although this appears to have been some kind of betterment levy. Something seems to have dampened the New Labour lvt excitement --Tony Blair would be my guess (alright, well-informed prejudice)
DBC, that article looked quite promising, but it's before my time. Don't forget, I first heard about LVT in 2005 and have only been a real proponent since 2006 when I realised that none of the supposed arguments against it actually stacked up.
Labour proposed a "planning gain supplement" a tax on the increase in land value when planning permission was granted to (particularly) green field sites. It was quietly shelved following pressure I think from the construction industry.
Land trust schemes exist but all appear to be independent from and not promoted by government.
DNA, the PGS was proposed a few years later - that was only on the actual plot that got planning. The way the Observer described it, the 2003 version was much more like proper LVT.
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