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The short answer is because of taxes. You can't have both taxes and fully free exchange of money.
by iofj 11y ago
The short answer is because of taxes. You can't have both taxes and fully free exchange of money.
- pessimizer 11y agoIncome taxes.
- imtringued 11y agoIncome counts as a money exchange from employer to employee.
- kspaans 11y agoOr between two businesses, or between two individuals, or by selling capital, or interest on loans, etc.
- nstj 11y agoCan you elaborate?
- kspaans 11y agoSure you could! If Land Value Tax was the only tax levied (i.e. no income or consumption taxes), it would unaffected by the anonymity of money.
- fragsworth 11y agoI love the concept of a Land Value Tax. I wish some government could actually try it out somewhere, as an exclusive tax.
- zero_iq 11y agoWouldn't this just cause the top 1% (who own the majority of the land in most countries) to charge higher ground rents to cover their land taxes, and make it increasingly difficult for anybody else to own land and buy out their freeholds, entrenching the wealthy elite even further?
- kspaans 11y agoIf you added an LVT on top of current taxation systems, probably. One way to make it more revenue-neutral would be to reduce some other tax, like sales taxes. But now consider idle land that's being held speculatively. The landowner expected to sell it at a profit in the future, but now those profits are impacted by the LVT. To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. (Or settle with less profit! :P)
- dublinben 11y ago>To maintain their profits they would need to find tenants for the land in order to pay the LVT. Can you expand on this point please? Why would it be necessary to earn rent from idle land in order to pay the LVT? Wouldn't unused land have a low value under a LVT system, much like it does now?
- kspaans 11y agoGood catch! I didn't mean to say the landowners would be forced to earn rent on their idle land. I meant that if they didn't want to pay the tax themselves (equivalent of charging the tax to their tenants), they would have to do something economically productive with the land. This is the theorized win-win with LVT: there is encouragement to develop otherwise-idle land. I think you're right that introducing LVT could lower the already low values of unused land. Perhaps its introduction would mean a glut of sales of land: fire sale! (Win-win again, according to my armchair-economics analysis. :P)
- ams6110 11y agoDo you not have property tax where you live? I thought it was ubiquitous as it's the ultimate way the government prevents an individual from really owning land.