Replace stamp duty with fairer form of property tax – Yorkshire Post Letters

I HAVE to take issue with Sara Rainwater from the TaxPayers’ Alliance (The Yorkshire Post, December 15). Her article rightly rails against stamp duty as something that discourages home-owners from buying or selling property.

She might have added that this chokes the housing market, by delaying moves closer to jobs, with all the cost of pollution that commuting creates, and by discouraging older residents from downsizing once their children have moved away.

Complaining about a tax one doesn’t like is too easy; we can all do that.

I’d expect better from a pressure group spokesperson; she either needs to offer an alternative tax to replace the revenue from stamp duty, and explain who would have to pay that; or she has to nominate government spending she believes we can manage 
without, and similarly explain how the people currently receiving that state service or benefit will manage without 
it.

She might also consider those who rent rather than buy.

My suggestion is to fundamentally restructure property taxes in a way that incentivises landowners to free up land for housing, removes the unfairnesses of the council tax banding system, keeps central government out of local planning issues and increases transparency. It’s called a Land Value Tax.

It starts on the basis that land is valued according to its purpose – a city centre riverside site is worth more than a remote moor because it is accessible, and the local authority will allow it to be used for building flats or offices. The smarter the area, the more LVT paid.

This simple ploy removes the problem we see today of “land-banking” where large corporations buy land, lobby for it to be reclassified for homes, and then delay development to push up the prices of the drip feed of homes being built elsewhere.

That kind of unearned and often hidden speculator income is fundamentally unfair on the majority of us who are taxed on our hard work.

The gain should be shared with the community that gave the permission to develop the land, and ploughed back into funding for schools, roads, and local services.

The Liberal Democrats 
are supporters of such a tax change; large landowners, property developers, and 
their apologists of course, are not.

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