Thursday, Sep 23, 2010
Vince Cable brings Land Value Tax back to the table
Daily Fail: Now Cable targets land and property: Business Secretary steps up his war on the wealthy
A defiant Vince Cable threatened new taxes on property and land yesterday as he stepped up his war on the wealthy. He opened up a new flank by signalling that he is pressing for ‘progressive’ taxes which would hit better-off homeowners and landowners. Mr Cable said he wanted to ‘shift the tax base to property and land, which cannot run away and represent, in Britain, an extreme concentration of wealth’. With all the land in Britain worth around £5 trillion, a 0.5% levy could raise £25 billion a year – as much as a 5p rise in income tax. The Business Secretary also said he regretted that his proposed ‘Mansion Tax’ – a one per cent annual levy on properties worth £2million or more – had been blocked by the Tories.
Posted by drewster @ 01:30 AM (1159 views) Add Comment
15 Comments
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1. quiet guy said...
Quite amusing. Cable's phrase ‘shift the tax base to property and land, which cannot run away and represent, in Britain, an extreme concentration of wealth’ isn't really the point of LVT but explaining the truth to land owners would be political suicide.
2. hpwatcher said...
This socialist idiot simply will simply make matters worse.
3. str 2007 said...
Well, at the moment I think it's refreshing to have someone trying to do something.
4. uncle tom said...
Ho ho..
As I said before they started, the LibDems always like to dance with the fairies at their party conferences..
VC has been put up to make the LibDem rank and file feel pleased with the coalition, and the Conservatives have discreetly agreed not to jump up and down about what he says.
Once the conference is over, everything he said will be forgotton and ignored.
5. mark wadsworth said...
This idea of LVT being a "war on the wealthy" is twaddle. It is perfectly easy to design a system which replaces THE ENTIRE TAX SYSTEM and is entirely fiscally neutral (it's jsut one number divided by another number), we can exempt main residences of pensioners (who 'only' own about a sixth of UK property wealth) and valuations are a doddle - ninety five per cent of UK developed land would be taxed at rates between £40 and £100 per sq yd per annum of developed land. Central London is off the scale - £1,000-plus per square yard, but most people live in flats so would only pay the corresponding fraction of the earth's surface that they occupy.
The winners would be those whose home is (currently) worth less than six times their gross annual income and the losers would be those with a ratio over seven.
So a 'wealthy' banker or solicitor who earns £200,000 and lives in a £1m house would be a winner, and the bloke next door who 'only' earns £150,000 would be a loser.
Similarly, if all the flats in a block are worth £130,000, those households who earn more than £22,000 would be winners and those households who earn less than £18,000 would be losers.
Haven't higher earners just made themselves a lot better off?
We can soften the whole thing by replacing the entire welfare system (including tax breaks for high earners) with a kind of Citizen's Income scheme.
What's not to like?
6. greenmind said...
Mark W. ever thought about setting up a political party to contest elections on this platform?
7. Wageslavex14 said...
@hpwatcher
There's nothing socialist about Cable's speech - only when you misrepresent what he said as the Mail did when talking about Vince's comments on raising tax (he roughly said "you can't raise income tax without discouraging business and growth, so the alternative is shift the burden onto property and land) does it appear even remotely socialist.
8. inbreda said...
...or writing a book on the subject?
9. timmy t said...
MW - and you could also choose how much tax you want to pay... want to pay less tax - just downsize. Like you say, what's not to like?
10. Phils said...
What a load of left wing nonsense, he's lost the plot.
The LIB DEMS looked OK in opposition but are just so embarrassing in government they are starting to make Gordon Brown look credible again!
11. phils said...
What a load of leftie nonsense. This man has lost the plot and even manages to make labour look sensible and credible again.
Crafty Cameron has let him off the leash to appease the loony LibDems!!
12. mark wadsworth said...
GM, yup, that's filed under "pipe dreams". Inbreda, there are tons of books on this, problem is nobody reads them. The only difference between me and other land value taxers is that I am very good at arithmetic.
TT, exactly - evasion is impossible, avoidance or mitigation is dead easy.
13. tom101 said...
You only live once MW and right now the rest of all our lives looks uncertain to say the least!
If you think about it this has to be fixed before any other aspect of our lives can continue with any degree of certainty. Do you want your kids to be visiting this effing site throughout their 20's and 30's.....40's?
Pipe dream to reality.... who's in?
14. mark wadsworth said...
Tom101, I sheepishly admit that I once suggested a name for this party - The Houses Are Too Expensive Party, aka The HATE Party, but got no further than that.
15. tom101 said...
Not the best name MW, we'll have to work on that. Mustn't give away too much in a name. Just a little clue to our views.