Tag Archives: lvt

Towards a national land value tax

By William Francis | Wed 4th March 2020 - 6:00 pm

To quote our party’s anthem “Why should we beg for work and let the landlords take the best? Make them pay their taxes on the land; we’ll risk the rest”.

Aside from voting reform, no one policy is as central to the Liberal Democrats as a land value tax. This should be a key policy for any platform our party promotes.

As of 2018 half of the UK ‘s net worth is tied up in land, amounting to some £4.9 trillion of wealth. More so than in many rich democracies. Given the large-scale wealth inequalities facing the country today, the adverse effects of artificially high land values (such as higher cost for entry for starting businesses, and the promotion of rent-seeking), and the growing need for more public spending (be it on existing institutions like the NHS, schools, local government or the Police or bold new projects like a Citizens Income) a land value tax kills many birds with one stone.

The question remains what form it should take, to which I have a few ideas.

Posted in Op-eds | 32 Comments

Why we need a residential Landowners’ Levy

By Tony Vickers | Sun 2nd September 2018 - 8:55 am

There are two motions for debate at Brighton that I particularly welcome, as founder member of ALTER and campaigner on Land Value Taxation (LVT) for 20+ years. There’s the one on Commercial Landowners Levy (F26), which is based on an excellent paper by four esteemed experts in our Party. Then there’s F34 “Promoting a Fairer Distribution of Wealth”.

Having read both motions, I was unhappy that F34 failed to match the combination of thorough research and analysis in F26 and also falls short on radical policy proposals to address the main cause of wealth inequality: the so-called Land Question. As a …