Friday, Jan 29, 2010
Land tax being mulled in New Zealand
NZ Herald: Land tax - what it could mean for you
Perhaps the idea will spread....
Posted by tom101 @ 08:47 PM (695 views) Add Comment
8 Comments
- If you do not have an admin password leave the password field blank.
- If you would like to request a password allowing you to add comments and blog news articles without needing each one approved manually, send an e-mail to the webmaster.
- Your email address is required so we can verify that the comment is genuine. It will not be posted anywhere on the site, will be stored confidentially by us and never given out to any third party.
- Please note that any viewpoints published here as comments are user's views and not the views of HousePriceCrash.co.uk.
- Please adhere to the Guidelines
1. freemanphil said...
I'm sick of people here touting new taxes. Don't you understand? You won't have politicians swapping one tax for another, you'll get all of them. We need a complete slashing of all taxes.
Tax is theft. It destroys the family, private enterprise, any job produced by the government destroys over two jobs in the private sector because it requires a non-productive bureaucracy element.
Britain built its railways and tram system before the income tax. Government destroyed it when it caused the great depression and destroyed our wealth in two world wars. It then took over and dismantled our public transport. It now claims it is the saviour of public transport. You are like the frog boiled slowly, wake up people. This is mental illness, this is Stockholm Syndrome, you have developed compassion for your captors.
When I give £30 to Ryanair, they get me from A to B at over 500mph on time. When I give £30 to government for airport tax, I get my privacy taken, I get forced to walk through cancer causing x-ray machines and I get delayed on my journey. The same equasion is true in all aspects of life. Wake up people. We don't need new, better taxes, because all taxes are theft and all taxes destroy productivity and distort market signals.
2. enuii said...
Land Tax is getting monotonously boooooring.
3. rumble said...
"You are like the frog boiled slowly, wake up people. This is mental illness, this is Stockholm Syndrome"
Amen brother!
I have to admit, being raised with so much government involvement in everything, it took a leap of imagination to consider things working without the buggers, so I do understand how others haven't.
4. mark wadsworth said...
Tax is theft, land ownership is theft, make the punishment fit the crime.
5. Fraggle said...
@Freemanphil/Rumble
While I understand the cynicism, I have to rejoinder "Don't YOU understand?". A country without any government at all would either be a tyranny of the landed (if land property rights are somehow maintained), because they would BE the government, or a tyranny of the strong (because they would take control of the land and thus BE the government). Whoever controls the land controls the people.
Ironically land tax is the only tax that is not theft, because you can't rightfully claim absolute ownership of land. I suppose you can argue over whether government should be the ones reclaiming that value, but I don't see how else it could be done.
You can actually turn it around as Mark does and say that freeholding land is itself theft. Your railings against other taxes (and burdensome government in general) are justifiable and pertinent as the benefits of a land tax can be weakened by other government activity, but they have nothing to do with land tax itself.
6. dbc reed said...
Mark Wadsworth is right: a new tube line gets built close to your gaff,land values go up fourfold.Tax the land values and you can pay for the tube line out of the revenue.Don't tax the land values: the locals get a big windfall increase in land values and house prices and rents go up excluding incomers; people have to pay for construction costs out of earned income.
Land Value Tax is not a tax but a repayment of unearned wealth .It has no distortionary effect whatsoever as in the absence of a public levy the private sector taxes the same amount,putting up land prices which put up prices in shops (and pubs!)
7. shipbuilder said...
freemanphil, rumble - sorry, but zero government is as much of a utopian fantasy as communism. Big government or big business, propaganda or the 'choice' between the advertising/branding of one company or another - all the same to me.
The delusion is the same as Conservative/Labour - if you don't like one system, then the other will come along and solve all our problems and we will live happily ever after. Rubbish.
8. Passingthru said...
I disagree shipbuilder, our current system of government, or "third way" as touted by Mr. Blair, and hinted as some sort of solution by your own intimation, seems to be the very worst of both of these bogeymen i.e. big government, with big corporations (big corporations backing big government, and vice-a-versa), with corruption manipulating legislation and taxation to suit each others needs, at the expense of all those at the bottom.
Also, do not confuse capitalism with corporatism. A small government, limited in scope, both transparent and accountable to the electorate, would be far preferrable to the current situation, and would go a long way to ensuring free and fair markets, where everyone has an equal opportunity given a good idea, and the right attitude.
The settlers in the USA fled Europe for exactly this reason, and when establishing a new government and constitution, sought to diffuse power, to avoid the tyranny they had escaped from. I believe the USA became the most successful nation on this planet, for exactly these reasons, unfortunately in the last 70 years or so the USA has turned their back on their most important legacy.