News - ALTER (Action for Land Taxation & Economic Reform)

Extraordinary video from the FT, showing only 19% of central London home sales going to British buyers.

London property porn The FT "With one house in central London on sale for £300m, London prime property appears to be a bubble fit to burst. This is also socially divisive as house prices in much of the rest of London are falling. Ed Hammond, property correspondent, explains to Long View columnist John Authers where the demand is coming from. (4m 57sec)" http://video.ft.com/v/1850522318001/London-property-porn

21 Sep 2012

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The UK's not so progressive income taxes

UK income based taxes are not as progressive as many think.

The chart below is the marginal tax rates for Income Tax and Employers and Employees National Insurance combined. This gives the full cost of taxes on labour, including the often forgotten Employers National insurance. When you take into account the perfectly legal ways that income taxes can be avoided with various tax reliefs like pensions etc the income based taxes are possibly flat or even regressive, rather than progressive.

19 Sep 2012

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Why people fail to understand Land Value Taxation

To those who know and love Land Value Tax (LVT) the case for it seems self-explanatory, compelling and unanswerable. Yet strangely it all too often turns out to be a very hard sell. Present economic theory rests on false assumptions established so long ago that people have forgotten what they are. So the difficulty in explaining the immediate relevance of LVT is that one has to clarify first principles at the same time. This is not so easy. An audience waiting to hear how to revive the economy will not want to be asked to revise basic concepts they think they already know.

JHALTER

by John Howell - ALTER member

19 Sep 2012

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Incorporating the Rentier Sectors into a Financial Model, by Michael Hudson

Interesting article by Michael Hudson, but probably of more interest to those with a general interest in economics, rather than just land tax.

18 Sep 2012

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A Bill to research Land Value Taxation - By Tony Vickers.

Calling all with an interest in major reform of Britain's property taxes. The Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has tabled a Private Members Bill.... "to require the Secretary of State to commission a programme of research into the merits of replacing the Council Tax and Non-domestic rates in England with an annual levy on the unimproved value of all land, including transitional arrangements"

18 Sep 2012

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Phillip Inman slams the property industry- and calls for Land Value Tax

Writing in the Guardian, noted pro LVT columnist Phillip Inman has slammed the property industry for sitting on land ready for development, and pointed out that LVT would prevent this behaviour. See his Guardian article .

18 Sep 2012

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