Tag Archives: land tax

Toby Matthews

Opinion: Miliband, Piketty and the Liberal response

By Toby Matthews | Tue 20th May 2014 - 10:15 am

milibandThree weeks ago, Miliband crossed the Rubicon and entered the heartland of Tory ideology. His support for European-style longer and more secure tenancies — and by extension capping rent increases — runs roughshod over a hitherto post-Thatcherite consensus.

Grant Shapps led the Tory riposte with a quick and ludicrous barb: Labour were proposing “Venezuelan-style rent controls”. Most people won’t know the details of Venezuela’s housing policy, but will be sure it’s unlikely to be any worse than our own.

Times have changed. We can see this clearly in that most …

Continue reading »
Posted in News and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 45 Comments
Joe Bourke

Opinion: A Mansion Tax to replace higher rate tax?

By Joe Bourke | Wed 18th April 2012 - 10:55 am

Mansion tax is not Land Value Tax, but it is a place to start down the road to shifting a significant part of the tax base from income to wealth.

There seems little argument that mansion tax would be a more effective method of taxing non-resident Non-Doms who acquired over 60% of the properties valued at over £2m in recent times.

The inequalities in wealth in the UK far outstrip inequalities in income. The top 10% of households own more wealth than the rest put together: 0.3 per cent of Britain’s population owns 69 per cent of its land.

The HMRC report …

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 16 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Tim
    @cim, when there is demand for workers, people train in the relevant skills - just look at Milton K, which builds far more houses relative to population than mo...
  • Simon Robinson
    Very good article @Rob. Yes, the housing shortage is indeed the major cause of the cost of living crisis, and your analysis of how that is pushing rents and hou...
  • George Thomas
    I have seen a George Monbiot Question Time clip where he explains that Wales could have been one the wealthiest parts of the UK but it's been the subject of an ...
  • cim
    I would have thought one of the biggest barriers to buildings getting built is the supply of materials and the availability of competent staff to turn those mat...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    This subject needs far more attention and more noise from Liberal Democrats, particularly in London. Rob’s direction is right, and the report is useful. But w...