“The Fair Tax” was launched by Smart Taxes in Buswells hotel yesterday. Fr Sean Healy introduced the book with a call for general tax reform. He pointed out that Social Justice Ireland has always been a supporter of land value tax. A proposal for a land value tax to fund a citizens income has been floated in a recent European conference held on social justice issues, with which he heartily agrees. He commended the book using the words of economist Colm McCarthy in the preface.

Will the 99% of Irish people be bounced into a second bailout of the elite 1% that includes the bankers, speculators and property developers? Could it be happening again under the cloak of secrecy the new Coalition has built around their new property tax? This book “The Fair Tax” compiled by the Smart Taxes network and edited by Emer Ó Siochrú is a wake up call that must not be ignored by the Irish people…

Relaxing planning restrictions would lead to a rebalancing of land designations towards their most profitable use, namely residential housing and business. This would lead to a fall in house and business property prices as supply increased, and windfall gains to land owners. A concurrent LVT would capture some of those gains. As the tax base is observable and fixed, neither avoidance nor evasion is possible, making collection cheaper. Substituted for other distortionary and inequitable taxes such as council tax and business rates, LVT could also increase efficiency. Paired with an overhaul of the antiquated system of land-use planning, it would boost growth and ease budgetary woes.

This is an intriguing and very innovative concept developed in New Zealand by Deirdre Kent. The paper is very long so I will post only excerpts, the summary and autobiographic details. It links a land value tax with a new local government issued money and with a new medium of land ownership that recalls Chris Cook’s Limited Liability partnership model. [...]

Wessex Regionalists say …..Talk of plugging loopholes suggests that the tax system requires nothing more than a little fine-tuning. In fact, it could do with a major overhaul. A Land Value Tax to deter speculation and prevent derelict land lying idle, for the first time integrating planning policy, land ownership policy and revenue-raising across the board. [..]

The proposal is for the ECB to create and then distribute trillions of euros annually to the national governments on a per capita basis. The per capita criterion means that it is neither a targeted bailout nor a reward for bad behavior. In fact, as the largest economy, Germany would get the largest distribution of euros from the ECB. This distribution would immediately adjust national government debt ratios downward, which eases credit fears without triggering additional national government spending. [...]