Taiwan to reform property values, will help revenue and tax transparency.

Abandoning outdated land values will harmonize Taiwan's many species of land and property taxes...

Christine Liu, Taiwan's Finance Minister

Christina Liu, Taiwanese Finance Minister

(photo: CW)

The tax policies of Taiwan has always made it a successful outlier, one of the few Asian Tigers to prosper right after World War II, and doing well until the recent global slump. A lynchpin of that policy is value-based land taxation. Even though the agricultural land tax is moribund (since 1985), it has been argued that the goal of that tax, to free up large estates (in the manner Denmark's land value tax) has been largely achieved.

Now, the land tax will revive in importance, as "assessed" values - i.e. outdated and low values, will be modernized, thanks to the efforts of Christina Liu, the new Finance Minister. As this Finance Ministry spreadsheet shows, land taxes in all its form make up the larger portion of local taxes and nearly 20% of all taxes at all levels of government.

The Taiwanese Land Value Tax is also evidently a fun tax to pay:

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Film regarding the collection and payment of the 2009 Land Value Tax

The KMT government has shown that innovative and flexible use of land value taxes can lead to a fairer and prosperous economy. Perhaps their sister democracies will take note of this idea inspired by Sun Yat-Sen who said:

"The land tax as the only means of supporting the government is an infinitely just, reasonable, and equitably-distributed tax, and on it we will found our new system."