Wednesday 17 November 2010

Unlikely Land Value Tax supporters - The London Evening Standard

From today's editorial on squatters:

At the same time, however, the Government should bear in mind that there are many properties that are left needlessly empty at a time when pressure on the existing housing stock has never been greater. Taking measures to discourage owners from leaving homes unoccupied, at the same time as tightening measures against squatters, would strike the right balance.

Land Value Tax sorts out both problems; if we replaced all taxes with LVT, then very few people would be able to afford to leave buildings vacant; and if they can afford that luxury good luck to them, they are compensating society in full.

It is then only fair for the government to return the favour by booting out squatters within the hour; failing which, the freeholder will be exempt from paying the LVT on that site until they are; the squatters will themselves be liable to pay the LVT, accruing daily with interest (plus renovations costs where appropriate).

8 comments:

james leslie said...

i put up a reasonable comment and like the tories and labour and liberals you edited it and took it down , that answered my question in spades . Power seekers your all the same .

Mark Wadsworth said...

James, I deleted your five earlier comments because they looked like spam - maybe they weren't, so if you have the time to summarise in a few clear sentences and re-post, that would be most helpful.

Scott Wright said...

Even to the extent of simply upping the personal allowance & scrapping higher rate tax and property related taxes and covering those losses with a minor LVT would bring about both huge administrative savings and discourage leaving properties empty as well as getting more people in work and stimulating the economy. Its so simple as to make one believe that governments past & present have a sinister agenda and civil war is the only way to get out of this faux democratic dictatorship death spiral.

Mark Wadsworth said...

SW, agreed, of course.

I'm not sure if it is a 'sinister plot', it's just that the elite have to throw some crumbs to the huddled masses, being the dream/the illusion that by simply taking on a mortgage you can become wealthy. That's how the landed aristocracy get away with it, they con us into thinking that we are all part of some glorious landlord state.

This sort of rules out lower taxes on incomes and higher taxes on land values (which would be a clear message that only work and enterprise will make you/us wealthy).

Scott Wright said...

"the dream/the illusion that by simply taking on a mortgage you can become wealthy"

Indeed if only my missus would have taken my advice 3 years ago that we'd be better off selling up & renting somewhere with 1 extra bedroom. At the time the rents on 3 bed terraces were lower by about £80 a month than her variable(yuk) mortgage payments on her 2 bed terrace. The houses on our road were selling at ~£95,000, now they're down at ~£65,000

Whilst still significantly clear of negative equity (~62% LTV) we would have had ~£45,000 in the bank with a lower monthly outgoings than at present had she sold up.

AntiCitizenOne said...

SW,
I do think there is a conspiracy to collect as much rental tax as possible from us.

The economy is run for the benefit of "them" at our expense.

See bailouts etc.

Bayard said...

You don't actually need LVT to discourage properties being left empty. You just have to remove the exemption from Council Tax or Business Rates. Mind you, some of the worst offenders are Central and Local Government.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, Business Rates exemptions for vacant commercial premises were significantly scaled back by Labour, one of the three or four good decisions they ever made*, and there has been a mild positive impact.

Most councils have scaled back vacant property discounts for Council Tax to 25% or 10%, but the tax is still so low that it does not change very much.

* See also: reducing VAT to 15%, exemption for capital gains on sales of subsidiaries and exemption for dividends from overseas, and the Schedule 23 deduction for employee share schemes. I can't think of many others.