Uncollected Land Taxes

J. Rupert Mason

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February 1939]

While writing and working to gain new friends and supporters for the teaching of Henry George, should we ignore the fact that there are millions of acres in this nation, today, on which the holders have paid no taxes for many years, and which are still controlled or in the possession of tax defaulting and tax evading holders?

Obviously, it is not only important that taxes be levied on land values, but it is also important that they be collected. If the comparatively small tax rates that have been levied on land values are permitted to go indefinitely uncollected, what is the point in seeking heavier levies?

Schools, roads, etc., formerly paid for by the owners of real property in the local taxing unit, are now largely being "assumed" by the states. The states in turn have had no difficulty getting billions for the asking from Uncle Sam. Under the New Deal this totals around twenty-six billion dollars, of which nineteen billion have been outright gifts and grants. Not only are the taxes that have been levied not being collected, in many states, due to tax sale moratorium laws, the "realtors" have gotten the legislatures to enact, but there has been a shift in the tax burden from land holders, to industry and the products of labor, far greater than is commonly realized.

It is said that over half of all the land in Florida has paid no taxes of any kind in more than ten years, yet it has not been foreclosed by the state, and can be "redeemed" by the original title holder, often without any penalty.

In a baseball game, if the umpire allowed a player to keep the bat after he'd had three strikes, there would surely be eight unemployed members of the team keeping the bench warm. The slump has left a vast new frontier on the doorstep of the states for unpaid taxes. It badly needs some attention, but industry merely "complains" that taxes are too high, and doesn't see that landholders have shifted a big new tax load on them.