IFS is right to back Land Value Tax

Dave Wetzel, President of the Labour Land Campaign congratulates the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) on its conclusion in its Green Budget 2014that a Land Value Tax on all commercial land would be more efficient and better for businesses than the current Business Rates system.

The IFS states that a land value tax “would remove altogether the disincentive to develop and use property that business rates creates”.

The Labour Land Campaign agrees that taxes on buildings act as a disincentive to use commercial sites efficiently but also that taxes on business are not only inefficient but are easily avoided and evaded whereas because land is immobile, an annual tax on the economic rent of each site according to its optimum permitted use cannot be defrauded and acts as an incentive to use valuable land in towns and cities efficiently and discourages the land hoarding and speculation that forces prices up.

Dave Wetzel says "The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ work showing the greater efficiency of Land Value Tax is a huge step forward for the UK to see a fundamental shift in taxation off earned incomes, savings and production and on to land and other natural resource rents. Land is not produced by human endeavour and land wealth is created as a result of public and private investments which we all pay for as tax-payers and consumers and not by the landowners who benefit financially."

The Labour Land Campaign recognises that most current taxes in the UK are unfair and inefficient. Income Tax along with National Insurance Contributions and Corporations Taxes are avoided and evaded by many, leaving the tax bill to be picked up by honest and less devious taxpayers. Everyone pays tax in some form or other directly or indirectly and those taxes pay for our public services that create and add to land value in the UK including transport, health care, good state schools, parks and so on but it is owners of land that reap the unearned income of land wealth through no effort on their part.

By reducing taxes on wages and business and introducing an annual Land Value Tax, land will be used more efficiently, demand for building on green land will greatly reduce and speculation in land prices increasing will disappear. Employment will grow as investors are encouraged to expand current businesses and start up new ones all over the UK and the land wealth which is created by all of us will be collected and used for the public good.

Help to Buy won't Help, says Labour Land Campaign

 

In his Financial Times article (10 October 2013 “Buyers beware of Britain’s absurd property trap”) Martin Wolf exposes the real reason for the Government’s Help to Buy Scheme – to stimulate land speculation in the UK and give land owners even more unearned income as the next property bubble grows and grows at the expense of the economy. 

Land values are created by our collective demand for public and private services and production; it is our taxes, our investments and our consumption that create land value. Because we have monopoly ownership of land in the UK (70% of land is owned by less than 1% of the population) we have monopoly ownership of land wealth. The poorest taxpaying commercial and residential tenants are subsidising the richest land owners.

Carol Wilcox, Secretary of the Labour Land Campaign, says:

"The mythical housing ladder is unattainable to a growing number of households and the UK’s tax system sustains this economic injustice and actually encourages land speculation. This is now so hideous that blocks of apartments are being built in London that have already been sold to overseas speculators before completion.

"We don’t need a government that fuels land price rises through subsidies which make homes even more unaffordable to a growing number to buy or rent. We need a courageous and imaginative government that tackles our tax system by shifting taxes off earned incomes and on to unearned incomes that the owners of our land and other natural resources take as theirs. By taxing the annual rental value of all land at its optimum permitted use value, the government will capture wealth that the whole of society creates to be reinvested in our public services."

 For more details visit www.labourland.org.

A Mansion Tax is fairer than Income Tax

LABOUR LAND CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE:

February 18^th 2013

Ed Miliband is right to look at shifting tax off incomes and on to unearned income by paying for the reintroduction of a 10p tax rate through a fairer property tax on high value homes. A home has two elements that make up its value – the building and the land it is located on. The land value is created by the whole of society not by any property owner and it is unfair that as land values rise because of public and private investments – paid for by us all as tax payers and as consumers - it is only owners of land that receive a financial windfall whereas tenants and other non property owners get nothing.

The Labour Land Campaign reminds people that the “asset rich, income poor widow“ being trundled out by some objecting to Ed Miliband’s proposal applies only to a very small group of people, and there are ways of getting around the problem, such as letting them roll up the tax payments until they dispose of the property. “Asset rich income poor” people have to pay for their gas, electricity, council tax etc today, why should those who can afford to upkeep a £2 million or more property be subsidised by those who live in modest homes, a large proportion of whom are tenants or living with family or friends.

Heather Wetzel, Chair of the Labour Land Campaign, says “Ed Miliband could do even better by reforming all property taxes and abolish business rates and council tax and replace them with an annual Land Value Tax being applied to all land according to its optimum permitted use. Such a tax would result in those homes, commercial buildings and idle development sites being used to provide more affordable homes and business premises instead of being held out of use by land speculators.

Land investors do not invest in anything; they actually speculate that land values will increase providing them with an unearned income that has been created by the whole of society. When tax payers from across the UK paid for the London Underground’s Jubilee line extension, it has been estimated that the extension cost £3.5 billion to build and land values rose by over £13 billion around the new stations because of the economic benefit the extension brought to those areas. Tax payers paid but land owners received a huge windfall that should have been collected and reinvested in public services throughout the country.”

If the London to Birmingham/Manchester and Leeds high speed railway (HS2) were funded in the same way then many local rail improvements including CrossRail 2 (Hackney to Chelsea) could be sustainably funded.

ENDS

 
For more details contact Steven Clarke at steven.clarke@labourland.org, or visit www.labourland.org.

Labour Land Campaign Affordable Housing Supply Conference 2012

A Permanent Solution to the Permanent Housing Crisis?

Wed 14 November 2012 

9.30-5pm 

 Directory of Social Change, London, NW1 2DP 

Cost £20 (Register using link below)
For further information please contact: eleanor.firman@labourland.org                Mob. 078572 97049

Speakers include
Lord Larry Whitty, Chair, Housing Voice Alliance; Duncan Bowie, Senior Lecturer in Spatial Planning, University of Westminster & Convenor, Highbury Group on Housing Delivery; Eileen Short, Defend Council Housing; Gordon Nardell QC (Land and Environment); Stephen Hill, C20 futureplanners, RICS Sustainability Task Force Europe; Christine Whitehead, Professor of Housing Economics, LSE and Senior Research Fellow CCHPR; Frances Plimmer, Chair, Valuation and Real Estate Commission, International Federation of Surveyors; Jacky Peacock, Brent Private Tenants Rights Group; Bob Colenutt, Northampton Institute of Urban Affairs; David Drew, former Labour MP Stroud; Dave Wetzel, former Vice-Chair Transport for London, founder, Labour Land Campaign.

Register online

Relaxed planning rules are not the key to growth

Press release from the Labour Land Campaign

The government claims that its new slimmed down planning guidelines will give new momentum to economic recovery.

The Labour Land Campaign says there is a far better way to free up land for housing and business development.

It is outrageous that new large scale developments could be more easily allowed on green land when so many sites in our towns and cities are underused or lay idle.

And house builders have no right to complain about planning constraints when they currently hold land with permission for the building of 300.000 new homes.

The Labour Land Campaign says we need a mechanism that brings idle brownfield sites and land banks into their full permitted use to protect our countryside from urban sprawl with developments in areas where the required infrastructure, health care or education provision is not in place, where there is poor public transport and where people are even more reliant on cars to take children to school and to go shopping and to commute to work.

The Labour Land Campaign advocates a fundamental change to taxation whereby taxes are shifted off labour and investment and on to natural resource wealth including all land according to its permitted use value.

Eleanor Firman, Chair of the Labour Land Campaign, says “we need an Annual Land Value Tax (LVT) on all land which will act as an incentive to bring the numerous empty and underused commercial and residential sites and buildings in our towns and cities into full use, providing much needed affordable homes and business premises. LVT will discourage urban sprawl, unnecessary long distance commuting and will use urban land more efficiently.

By eliminating or reducing other negative taxes such as Stamp Duty Land Tax, Business Rates, Council Tax, VAT, Corporation Tax and Income Tax, LVT will encourage economic revival in depressed areas of the country as marginal costs for businesses will reduce. We need to put a stop to property speculation where irresponsible and greedy land owners are only interested in taking land wealth that is created by the whole of society and care nothing about the impact their behaviour has on local communities or on the environment.

Land is a precious natural resource and should be used sparingly; urban sprawl damages our environment in so many ways.”

ENDS

Another Budget for the benefit of the Landed against the Landless

PRESS RELEASE FROM THE LABOUR LAND CAMPAIGN


According to George Osborne his budget will ensure the richest will pay five times more tax through a cap on reliefs, taxes on high end property transactions and presumed better behaviour.

All of these revenues are highly variable year to year, unlike the minimum annual sum £10,000 Osborne has gifted to the highest earners by cutting the 50p rate. This is unlikely to be fiscally neutral as he claims.

But in any case, the half a billion Osborne thinks these measures would raise is derisory, and as such, a sign of his clear approval of those economy-wrecking Masters of the Universe in the world of financial services who are mostly keeping their telephone number salaries and pensions, unlike those who serve us in the public sector.

The ONS shows gross property wealth in 2010 amounted to 4.35 trillion. Much of this value is actually land - or location - value. Yet Stamp Duty, Business Rates and Council tax barely touch this and these charges fall disproportionately on the least well off. Properties in the highest banding for Council Tax for example, are charged only three times more those in the lowest.

Property owners and property speculators will always say a silent thank you to taxpayers for the underlying and uplift in the value of the land they own when projects such as Crossrail are announced and then created. Property prices in London and parts of the South can be as much as two thirds land value or even more, as a result.

Eleanor Firman, Chair of the Labour Land Campaign says:

"It is unfair that workers wages are taxed, pensions are taxed, business is taxed, goods and services are taxed but land wealth is not taxed.

"By reforming property taxes and shifting taxes from wages and production onto land and other natural resources (including oil, airwaves and airport landing slots) we could reverse the current economic decline and relieve those unfairly bearing the brunt of austerity.

"The wealth that arises from our collective use of these resources should be reclaimed for investment in our public services. This is far fairer than the current system that lets this unearned income to accrue to those who didn’t create it.

"Applying an Annual Land Value Tax on land and other natural resources, will allow new businesses to be able to afford to set up all over the UK as marginal costs to businesses will be reduced and workers are left with more to spend."

The UK needs Annual Land Value Tax

Dave Wetzel

This last pre-budget statement before next spring’s General Election gives the Labour Party an opportunity to set the UK economy and our social relations on a totally different path.

The concept of “annual land value tax” sounds just like another detailed fiddling with tax policy that will have no greater impact on the economy than an extra penny on a pint of beer. But in fact, the introduction of an annual land value tax (LVT) would be truly radical.

Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. For most of the hundred thousand years of humankind’s existence on this planet, land has been shared as a common resource like the air we breathe, the wind that turns windmills or the sunshine we rely upon to grow our crops and provide us with energy and good health.

Circa eleven thousand years ago we began to change from hunter/gatherers in the wilderness to adopt nomadic and settled agriculture on community owned land. Five thousand years ago city states began to develop on the basis that the surplus arising from the land (rental values) was used to create new communal infrastructure such as roads, defensive walls, bridges, temples, piped water and irrigation systems etc.

It is only in the past three thousand years that individuals began to seek ownership of the surface of our planet and claim nature’s rent as their own.

Most economists ignore the role of land in production arguing that since the industrial revolution, land does not play an important role in the economy. They couldn’t be more wrong.

But why emphasise land?

Because we cannot survive on this planet without access to land.

We need land to grow food, for mining, to locate homes, commerce and industrial production. In a modern economy we also require tools and machinery (capital) to create wealth. The major difference between capital and land is that capital is man-made and has a cost of production, whereas land is a free gift of nature with no cost of production. Imagine a modern Robinson Crusoe cast away on his own – he can survive without capital (although he would soon utilise his labour and nature to provide simple tools and perhaps a spear to hunt more effectively) but it would be totally impossible for him to survive without access to land and the benefits of nature.

Today landowners benefit from the provision of public (and private) services. As these services improve, so the rent and value of their land increases – without any effort on their part.

The Jubilee Line Extension of the Underground railway in London cost taxpayers £3.5bn but increased land values in the vicinity of the eleven new stations by £13bn.

Two householders in adjacent houses, earning the same wages would pay the same amount in tax to provide good local public services. The one who owns the freehold land and their home would see their tax investment reimbursed as the value of their property increases but the other who rents their home would receive a higher rent demand from their landlord as the value of their location rises – this cannot be equitable, just or fair!

Tony Benn often reminds us that land privatisation was the first privatisation.

So, how in the next budget, can a Labour Chancellor reverse the effects of recent history and restore the rights of all to share land wealth?

The simplest method would be to assess the annual rental value of all sites, identify their owners and levy a percentage of the value each year – an annual land value tax.

This would be the opposite of Labour’s development land taxes that have failed so completely in the past. A one-off tax on development can be easily avoided by not developing whereas an annual tax on the rental value of land cannot be avoided and is therefore very cheap to collect.

The immediate effect of LVT would be to discourage land hoarding and land speculation. The owners of land would be encouraged by the tax to put their land to good use. Brownfield sites and empty buildings would be brought into use. Land would become cheaper to acquire. The cost of social and private housing would reduce. Cheaper land and premises would facilitate new start-up businesses and the expansion of existing ones.

An important effect of LVT would be to make our towns and cities operate more efficiently. Not only does a dense population make more use of public and private services but local authorities would be encouraged to provide better amenities such as parks, sports facilities and nature trails as these increase the land values in the immediate neighbourhood.

The whole economy would benefit. Jobs would be created and poverty alleviated.
By making better use of wasted sites and buildings in our towns and cities the demand for urban sprawl would be reduced. This would cut unnecessary commuting and transport costs and assist the battle on climate change by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

The revenue from LVT could be used to address our budget deficit and to reduce taxes on wages and production.

Just imagine the effect of a 5% vat rate, no council tax, no business rates on buildings, no stamp duty and no income tax for workers earning less than the average wage.

David Cameron would be lost for words!

Of course, as with any tax change there would be losers. We need not shed tears for the Duke of Westminster and his ilk who own swathes of the most valuable urban and rural land, but will need to consider transitional help to protect pensioners and others on low incomes but who own their own homes and those on modest incomes with high mortgage repayments. For example, LVT payments could be deferred or rolled over until the property is disposed of and then the outstanding amount (with modest interest) could then be repaid from the sale price, and/or LVT could be introduced with a tax-free personal allowance similar to the personal allowance for income tax. In this way we could ensure that nobody pays LVT on a principal home worth say less than half a million pounds.

Similarly, small businesses operating at the margin of profitability, could also be given transitional assistance which would be of particular benefit in sustaining those businesses which provide unique local services such as the community baker or the local post office.

Like Denmark, parts of Australia and Hong Kong, Harrisburg, the Capital of Pennsylvania, has a modest land value tax. The effect over thirty years has been startling with reduced unemployment and greater prosperity in the city leading to a lower crime rate.

It is not just land that can provide a communal rental value. Personal number plates for cars should be rented for 20 year periods and not sold outright. Toll roads and car parking fees can collect the economic rent of our highways and car parks. Aircraft at busy airports demand both time and space for the creation of valuable landing slots which should be rented to airlines by the government, and yet even for the new proposed third runway at Heathrow (which I oppose) this Labour Government is suggesting we GIVE these landing slots away instead of collecting this public revenue by auctioning them for 10 year periods. In 2000, Gordon Brown rightly rented the spectrum for 3G mobile phones and his 20 year licences raised £22.4bn at auction. He has endowed his successor with the opportunity to raise a similar amount in ten years time.

A Labour Chancellor, Philip Snowden, introduced a land value tax in his 1931 Budget which was repealed by the Tories before the valuation of the land was completed. Herbert Morrison proposed a Land Value Tax for London in 1938.

Alistair Darling needs to break with post-war tradition instead of rummaging in The Treasury’s rusty old toolbox.

As land values reach their nadir in the current land cycle, 2010 would be a propitious time to introduce an Annual Land Value Tax.

• Labour Land Campaign - www.LabourLand.org


*This article is taken from the LEAP Red Papers: The Cuts, which can be discussed in full on the LRC website