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Posted on Monday, May 14, 2012 12:43 PM
 Assaults on the property tax have been commonplace in the US (and Australia,New Zealand, etc.) in the past few decades. We think that the property has a lot wrong with it; but its a situation that calls for a scalpel not an atom bomb. Here are some basic alternative solutions, including the land value tax as a way to abolish the tax on buildings.
Four Ameliorations for
Assessment Increases or Tax Increases: an Analysis
William Batt, Ph.D.,
Joshua Vincent, ED |
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Joshua Vincent: Posted on Wednesday, May 09, 2012 3:47 PM
Flint's Dayne Walling - a Mayor open to ideas and opportunities for his city
The story of Flint Michiganneed not be retold here. The story of Flint is the story of many Rustbelt cities from Troy New York to St. Louis Missouri. Existing for decades as a city with good jobs for all that wanted one, a city that rewarded enterprise and hard work. The downturn of the US automobile industry was recently (But chimerically) reversed by pumping billions of taxpayer dollars to Chrysler and General Motors, yet has had little effect on the city itself. |
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Joshua Vincent: Posted on Friday, April 20, 2012 11:49 AM
Independence? Perhaps, but not likely
Recently, an
active and conservative member of the Republican Party in central Pennsylvania
sent UrbanTools a copy of something called the "Property
Tax Independence Act" (PTIA)
with the interesting subtitle of "Liberty Equality and
Prosperity". The legislation – more
accurately a proposal for a constitutional amendment in the state of
Pennsylvania – Is given a seemingly official sobriquet of “House
Bill 1776.”
As yet, this is not an
actual bill however. |
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jrv: Posted on Monday, April 09, 2012 4:32 PM
The past 15 years have been very kind to India and its emerging new economy. The past few years however have not been so nice.One problem have been the traditionally sclerotic planning and development authorities who have been sluggish in releasing land for development, along with the overall mistrust of the free flow of capital and labor, dependent on the classic mid-20th century model of Fabian socialism.
Recently, the Indian government reasserted its heavy hand by overturning the previously independent Indian judiciary by putting a tax on international partnerships and acquisitions retroactively to 1962. |
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jrv: Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 2:18 PM
Dr. Herbert Barry of Pittsburgh, an UrbanTools Director has shown his adeptness in outreach to all forms of media, including print and now radio. Please call in to the radio show on Friday March 30, to participate in this broadcast.
 I will be interviewed on a radio show, on Friday 30 March 2012, 10:00 to 10:30 AM (Eastern time). Listeners can access it at the phone number 1-424-220-1873. The title I chose for the program is "How to remedy our maladaptive sources of government revenue. |
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Joshua Vincent: Posted on Wednesday, February 22, 2012 5:30 PM
Abandoning outdated land values will harmonize Taiwan's many species of land and property taxes...
(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 |
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Joshua Vincent: Posted on Friday, February 03, 2012 1:39 PM
The clocks ticks on bad tax policy as the big dogs jump in.
Not too long ago, a Blair wallah sniffed at a land value tax as akin to the window tax of 18th Century yore. In the face of a very possible recurring recession, the easy condescension is increasingly out of place...
Background: UrbanTools always looks internationally to developments in other think tanks and nations for a sense that old methods taxation and finance cease to be based in terms of left or right, but rather on what works and what doesn't.
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Joshua Vincent: Posted on Thursday, February 02, 2012 6:13 PM
Failure is not an option: Connecticut Building Permits Slide
There is no state as well situated for growth and prosperity than Connecticut. Just beyond reach of New York's staggeringly high taxes and overlooking the placid Long Island Sound, crossed by rail and Interstate connections, and with one large airport, Connecticut has parlayed these advantages into a couple of centuries of growth, jobs and wealth.
Yet, slippage in the US economy as a whole coupled with a growing rich/poor divide ( |
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Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012 5:42 PM
Connecticut, a state blessed with great wealth but also great poverty, has examined the idea of permitting Connecticut cities - almost by definition poor and dis-invested - to have the option to enact property tax reform in the shape of a land value tax, which Governor Jody Rell signed into law for New Londonin 2009. The reasons were clear: the decay of Connecticut towns was proportional to the damage that sprawl has wrought on the formerly bucolic countryside, with farms replaced by subdivisions, and bank-breaking infrastructure costs. |
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Posted on Monday, January 30, 2012 4:50 PM
Steve Hanke and Stephen Walters have been writing on taxation and economic policy for years, with close analyses of what makes urban areas hit or miss. Their latest piecein the Wall Street Journal emphasizes why some cities are more stable than others: reasonable taxes. Some might disagree that low property taxes are the driver of growth, although that helps. Taxation on mobile forms of wealth, like incomes, commerce and sales hurt more.
Happily, respected Case Western economics professor |
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