david_carnell

I'd love to see you sell that one politically! "You know that house you've lived in for 30 years?" "Yeah" "Well now you have to liquidate it - but the good news is that income tax is down!" Not that I disagree with the fundamentals behind it, mind you.

UDT - my Dad used to be a printer. I wouldn't know one end of a heidelberg press from another. Stop speaking nonsense.

Interesting read, Huguenot. What's interesting from the use of LVT in some areas is that in urban areas, the existence of vacant plots and empty buildings decreased because it made financial sense to ensure you were getting rent from them. This would alleviate the need for urban property and reduce pressures on waiting lists.

SC - the property bubble with excessive mortgages trapping people in their homes is something we should be looking to eradicate. Part of the problem is that a generation of people have grown up seeing a house as an investment that HAS to make money rather than be a home to shelter them and their family. That is something that needs to change.

Unsurprisingly the Telegraph aren't allowing comments on that article - they make the people who post on the Daily Mail seem logical and happy-go-lucky.

You'll need to contact Station Master Barry Jones. Send him a private message through the forum or email him as he hasn't been active for a few weeks.

Council tax isn't progressive either. It doesn't take into account income. And I think the idea that it would be more expensive to live in the centre of urban areas and cheaper to live in rural areas with few public services seems correct. And not dissimilar to the current set up. If you're poor, the chances are you live in rented accommodation or very small accommodation. Either way you'd pay very little or no land value tax. It would be easy and cheap to administer and there is no way to evade or avoid it. I'm trying to advocate not in addition to all the taxes we have at the moment but as a possible alternative - I don't have all the answers but am simply raising it as a possibility. If we want to make Britain a fairer and more equal society I think a LVT would be one such method.

Yes, that's another possibility that seems more plausible but would require another form of property tax.

Peckhamgatecrasher Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sounds like she needs an hysterectomy. > *snorts into cup of tea* She's quite unlikable as a person but the account of wilderness is what made me read it. Now, does anyone have a good wood carving book they'd recommend. I made a spoon and want more!

Jeremy - I'm not convinced your figures would be accurate without looking at land values in different areas. Obviously the introduction of such a tax would alter vlaues of property and land in the early years. UDT/Loz - LVT would be levied only on the land value not on the buildings. At the moment we penalise, with higher business rates, people who improve their business buildings, while we reward, with lower rates, those who let their buildings fall into disrepair. LVT would bring idle land in towns and cities into use. This would reduce costly urban sprawl. The extra supply of land would cut land prices and so cut accommodation costs for homes and business premises. I think it's not unfair to say there would be early difficulties in implementation but the long term benefits would massively outweigh them. Land is for all, not the few.

Yes, of course they would be taxed differently because those who can afford to live in affluent parts of the country, such as London, would be in a position to pay more. I don't think the variations would be so wild as to cause any real problems. I think it would actually iron out more of the excesses within the property system and would discourage landlords thus bringing house prices down. It would make a home just that. You wouldn't be taxed on its improvements and perhaps with the removal of stamp duty and CGT not on it's profits either. The only thing you'd pay for, at a flat rate, would be the land it sat on at the market rate. If you sell your three bedroom house in East Dulwich now, the stamp duty rate you pay compared to someone doing the same in Wrexham is massive. I don't see why this would be any less fair. In fact the advantages listed in various articles seem to massively outweigh the negatives. The only losers would be landowners not using their land, absentee landlors who allow property to fall into a disreputable state and builders in urban areas who fail to improve land they have purchased. All worthwhile targets.

A Book of Silence by Sarah Maitland An account of a woman and her ever more intensive and profound search for silence and her experiences of prolonged periods of it. More interesting than it sounds.

Yeah, waht an utter arse tath perosn is.

I'm not sure I understand Jeremy. Seemingly that is a more accurate reflection of market values? Insurance companies regularly seperate the value of unimproved land to that of the house upon it. I'm not suggesting it as a single tax but I think it would make an effective replacement for the outdated council tax whilst penalising those who leave their land vacant. Surely this is a tax that those on both the right and left can approve of. Since taxes on wealth and property discourage (apparently) progress in these areas, I have to ask why do landowners deserve rent? Without landowners, the land and natural resources would still be available. They have existed since the planet was formed. They have not been created by human effort or ingenuity.

Well the logic is that as a second home you use the facilities provided by the council significantly less than those living there permanently. My opinion is that street lights don't get switched off just because you don't visit your Cornish cottage in December. Cough up.

Loz - not taxing property, but land value. A different thing (I think). The wiki page explains it well but what it effectively does is tax the one of the few inelastic goods of which there is only a finite amount. It would also correct the abomination that allows a tiny fraction of the population to own vast tracts of land, often fallow, when we are importing 40% of our food. It would allow rural areas to rebuild their economies. A tax on second homes and an end to their council tax discount wouldn't go amiss either.

Don't know if you are correct in your original assertion Dee. The MOJ says that there are about 2000 places free before prisons reach "operational capacity" and there is also a small ceiling above this to allow for emergencies.

Why not tax land value?

Adele - Someone Like You Whilst drinking Sainsbury's Organics Pinot Grigio. Tastes of feck all but carries kudos.

Private rented sector. Friends. Family. Streets.

Hi Trish I regularly piss people off and can be found in the phone book. David.

It's happened in the Drawing Room quite a lot. But most people in there bother to acknowledge sources.

Do you jerk your knee? Do you jump on bandwagons? Do you mindlessly follow crowds without stopping for one moment to consider what you're doing? Do you have overly simplistic answers to incredibly complex problems? Then you need a Facebook petition.

Admin - can we just keep one thread on "why?" this happened rather than one for every half-baked theory some guy in a pub comes up with? Thanks.

Agreed Loz. But neither can these riots, even the ones in Tottenham, be attributed to anger at this death. That's nonsense.