Center for the Study of Economics - Company Message
Incentive Taxation Blog

National Tax Policy

How to mend the Property Tax

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

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Abandoning outdated land values will harmonize Taiwan's many species of land and property taxes...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









(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

Cymraeg treth tir gwerth (Welsh land value tax)

Welsh Land Value Tax

Wales AP Member Mark Drakeford

Without fear of contradiction, it is easy to assert that the concept of tax reformnowfrom global to local has taken off in the past three years.  The global economic downturn still lasts, and postindustrial areas in North America, Europe are in particular need of a way to level the playing field with more efficient and competitive Asian, African and Latin American markets.
Although governments may dither, leaders have emerged all over the world ready to challenge dominant, smug yet failed policies.

UK's Institute for Fiscal Studies Agrees with OECD (and us): Tax Land Values for a Healthier Economy





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.

Ireland's New Property Tax: Not Ready for Prime Time

Kim Broughton/Polaris
Quick quiz: what's the best use of this Irish land?
Irish property bust provides literal fodder.

The New Year brought the first iteration of the property tax in Ireland.  In one way, it is a welcome advance in a nation where a land value bubble still reverberates like so many Block Buster bombs. 

Hectares ofhalf-built or abandoned"luxury" condos and homes littler the greater Dublin area, after the spectacle ofwild-eyed lending that led to property loans making up easily mare than 2/3rds of all bank lending.

Tax Revenues: Is it Time for Government to cut out the chase?

Since the Great Recession of 2008 (To Present)  is still afoot, many national governments have tried to plug perceived loopholes in tax policy at the level where trans-national corporations and super-earners can re-domicile (think Bahamas, Isle of Man, etc.) and avoid tax, while other revenues have faded.




So far, bills introduced to stop the practice of using tax havens have been rolled out in the US, with little progress.  The