PAPERS ON PROPERTY TAX

The Failure of the Land Value Tax in the UK
Published March, 2025

The failure of the land value tax in the UK" and you can add the following text about it: This paper looks at the land value tax that was introduced in the UK in 1910. The preamble to the paper states: By the early 1900s, Progress and Poverty was more popular than Shakespeare among Labour MPs. In 1910, the Liberal government of Henry Asquith implemented a tax on increases in land value and undeveloped land with a view to reforming Britain’s system of property taxes.

Asquith’s gambit failed spectacularly. Britain in the early 1900s became a case study in how administrative complexity can derail land value taxation. The tax cost more to administer than it collected, and it was so poorly worded that it ended up becoming a tax on builders’ profits, leading to a crash in the building industry. As a result, David Lloyd George, the man who introduced the taxes as chancellor in 1910, repealed them as prime minister in 1922. The UK has never fully reestablished a working property tax system.

This history serves as a cautionary tale for modern Georgist sympathizers who believe a land value tax will solve the world’s housing shortages. While Georgists argue that land markets suffer from inefficient speculation and hoarding, Britain’s experience reveals more fundamental challenges with both land value taxes and the Georgist worldview. The definition of land value was impossible to ascertain properly and became bogged down in court cases. When it could be collected, it proved so difficult to implement that administration costs were four times greater than the actual tax income. Instead of increasing the efficiency of land use, it became a punitive tax on housebuilders, cratering housing production.

Worst of all, it not only failed to solve the fundamental problem with British local government – that it had responsibilities that it could not afford to cover with its narrow base – but actually contributed to the long-term crumbling of the property tax systems Britain did have.

Confronting the New Property Tax Revolt
Published by the Tax Foundation, November 2024

‍This paper examines the problems being experienced in the USA with property tax systems during a period of rapidly increasing values. The key findings are:

• Property values have skyrocketed in recent years, rising almost 27 percent faster than inflation since 2020, which yields dramatically higher property taxes in jurisdictions that fail to adjust millages (rates) downward.
• Legitimate discontent over high property taxes is fueling a movement to significantly curtail or even eliminate the property tax, but many of the policy solutions offered, like assessment limits and tax swaps, create more problems than they solve, distorting property markets and undermining long-term housing affordability.
• Despite its unpopularity, the property tax is relatively economically efficient, and shifting to any alternative tax would harm economic growth.
• Well-designed levy limits can provide homeowners with much-needed relief from soaring property tax bills without the harms associated with other policy responses, and narrowly tailored circuit breakers can help ensure that low-income families are not priced out of their homes
• The property tax is a tax worth saving—and therefore worth reforming. Policymakers should work to constrain the runaway growth of property tax liability witnessed in some parts of the country but should not overcompensate by eliminating or dramatically curtailing an economically efficient tax.

Futureproofing the Valuation Profession
Published by The International Property Tax Institute (IPTI), September 2024

This is an IPTI White Paper which contains details of the research undertaken through an international collaboration project involving colleagues from several valuation agencies from around the world. It looks at a variety of issues including how to attract and recruit staff, how to develop them using both internal and external facilities, and how to retain them. It contains a series of recommendations which will help valuation agencies to improve their performance in all these important aspects of their operations. There is also a Synopsis of the White Paper which summarizes the key points.

Lessons from the Netherlands - Real Estate Assessment and Property Tax Systems
Published by The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, September 2024

An extract from the Lincoln website states: "This volume presents general principles and best practices for property tax policy and administration, offering examples from the Dutch experience that provide lessons of international applicability. It discusses five key topics:
1. The importance of current market value as a tax base;
2. property tax relief policy;
3. the implementation of new types of valuation models;
4. statistical measures to assure assessment quality and equity;
5. and the importance of a solid system of base registers."

How to Design and Implement Property Tax Reforms
Published by The IMF, September 2024

An extract from the paper's summary states: "Property taxes are often under-exploited sources of local public revenues. A broad-based tax, raised at modest rates, can potentially generate significantly higher revenues in many countries, and meet most of the costs of improved local public services. This note provides a practical guide to designing and implementing reforms to recurrent taxes on immoveable property and real estate transfer taxes."

A Fairer Property Tax - a practical alternative to replace stamp duty and council tax
Published August 2024

The way Britain taxes households is both impractical and unfair. The stamp duty land tax raises transaction costs, preventing people from moving for new job opportunities, and undermines growth. Council taxes are set in such a way that an average home in Blackpool contributes more to the public purse than a mansion in Kensington. This need not be the case.

This report sets alternatives to the status quo and the rationale for these choices. In some cases, they are based on a clear and overwhelming economic principle. In others, they are a way to try to marry sometimes conflicting ideas and sometimes they are a response to the realities of political consent.

Happy 25th birthday, Calgary market value assessment for property tax
Published March 2024

Why we need a green land value tax and how to design it
Published February 2024

The Fiscal Fallout of Boston’s Empty Offices Report
Published by the Boston Policy Institute, Inc., February 2024

A paper by the Centre for Cities with suggestions for how Wales in the UK could reform council tax to in order to boost growth and reduce inequality
‍Published February 2024

"Britain's Council Tax Burdens" is a report by the Taxpayers' Alliance which looks at the varying burdens of council tax across the UK
‍‍Published August 2023

UK responses to the pandemic and the changing agenda after COVID-19 in relation to local property taxation
‍Written by Patrick Bond and published by IPTI, ‍February 2023

Rebuilding the Social Compact: Urban Service Delivery and Property Taxes in Pakistan
Published by the International Growth Center (IGC), August 2022

Designing and implementing a local residential property tax from scratch: lessons from the Republic of Ireland
Written by Dr Gerard Turley
Published December 2022

Canadian Property Tax Rate Benchmark Report
‍Report from the ODI
Published June 2022

Digitalization of property taxation in developing countries 
‍Annual report by the Altus Group
Published October 2022