Land Value Tax Primer

George Yamada

[Reprinted from Cross Country Check-up, Winter 1988,
a Canadian radio program aired 13 November 1988]

THE sales tax is regressive in principle because it includes taxation of a man's or woman's labor.

Since it is labor that produces the goods required by society, a tax on labor is essentially a deterrent to production.

A vastly modified tax structure which essentially embraces the concept of a single tax on LAND (and its resources) to support ALL social services and operational costs of government would create equity and stimulate productivity in society at large.

The value of land increases by the factor of population density on that land. It is people who add value to a particular parcel of land. Logically, the users of land should pay a tax for the occupation and use of that parcel of land, by virtue of its publicly-created value.

Any user of the land and its resources - including oil, minerals, forests, water - should be taxed accordingly. This revenue pays for the user's provisional occupation of that particular parcel of land, according to its fair market value. Its ownership, however, remains in the public domain - community-accountable self-government (NOT equated here to the State).

The taxes from this one basic, logical source of public revenue, the land base, is often called a Land Value Tax (LVT), or ground rent.

Any excess from the Land Value Tax or ground rent assessment would be returned to the whole population on an equal per capita basis, after deduction of expenditures for legitimate costs of government and social services.

The Earth's land base along with its life support system, was created for all equally and its benefits should accrue to all equitably.

A fundamental restructuring of the taxation base on the above premises would do away with all other existing taxes and avoid the prevailing chaotic mess of overlapping, often contradictory, local, provincial and federal taxation and fiscal policies.

This single, structural simplification of our collective tax and fiscal policies would cut off much of the burdensome bureaucracy dedicated solely to enforcement of current hodge podge tax policy.

This essential tax reform would enormously reduce the high cost of BIG government. It would return Nature's soundest equity - the LAND, an endowment by the Creator to ALL dwellers on this planet - back to every man and woman in every local community where ultimate political initiative and authority belongs.