Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (191)

So far, the Home-Owner-Ist élite (the bankers and large landlords) have kept above the fray and relied on the fact that their foot soldiers (from owner-occupiers to journalists with BTL portfolios to Faux Lib's) will do the campaigning for them, but now the gloves are off. The paid-for editorial in yesterday's CityAM was a long rant against the Lib Dem's idea that we could/should scrap the 50p top income tax rate and have a Mansion Tax instead.

His argument seems to be that our entire economy depends on a few foreign money launderers and tax evaders who will pay insane prices for housing in a very small part of London. In his view, they don't care about investing in UK productive businesses (so there is no advantage in reducing income tax rates, that's for us grateful plebs to pay); they don't trust our banks enough to just deposit money with them as a safe haven; and he falls for the fiction that not having land value tax makes it cheaper for them to buy land and buildings (it doesn't - in the long run it makes it more risky and more expensive):

A key reason the UK, for all its unattractive characteristics, remains a safe haven of sorts for global investors, is its history of legal stability. Foreigners know the UK takes property rights seriously and that their wealth will be protected – that is why they spend so much here and why Greeks fleeing crumbling banks are converting euros into London homes.

This is great for our current account deficit, means we remain at the heart of capital flows and that the world’s entrepreneurs and financiers will look at the UK kindly when they decide where to create jobs. It helps preserve London’s role as a global city.

Right. So if we reduced taxes on income, all those foreign money launderers and tax evaders wouldn't see the UK as an excellent place for inward investment into productive businesses? I don't see why the average Brit should be called on to pay extra taxes on their hard earned just to subsidise 'wealth protection' for these people anyway, bearing in mind that lower taxes on land push up the purchase price of land, thereby increasing the likelihood that owners of land will suffer nasty capital losses, which is hardly 'wealth protection', is it?

The rest of the article is a long list of KLNs, all of which I have rebutted before...
- LVT is neither a jealousy surcharge nor a tax on 'wealth' in any sense of the word, it is a user charge.
- Replacing income tax with LVT is not a 'war on the rich' (many truly rich people, i.e. high earners, would end up much better off).
- LVT is the thin end of the wedge, but that wedge was a lot thicker decades or centuries ago. Historically, taxes on land values were the main source of UK government revenue before they starting introducing all these stealth taxes like income tax (and all its variants). It's these stealth taxes on income which are the ever thicker end of the wrong wedge.
- Because LVT has no Laffer effects, a tax shift would make us all better off in the long run (apart from the current Home-Owner-Ist élite, of course).
- LVT is not an attack on 'private property', income tax is.
- He plays the Poor Widow Bogey twice.
- He claims that wealthy people will all move abroad (nonsense).
- He points out what he sees as "crippling practical flaws" which are no such thing if we apply commonsense.
- A tax on land is a tax on land. It is not, and will never be, a tax on pension fund assets; we already have those - everybody who doesn't save into an approved pension is paying the largest part of £44 billion's worth of tax breaks/subsidies for those who do and there's a privately collected tax of between £40 and £60 billion a year on pension assets (being the fees and commissions earned by the pensions companies).
- He ends the article by citing some mythical past which, on the facts, did not exist (see above).