Struggling Governments Get Creative to Raise Income - NYTimes.com.
This article describes some of the tax approaches that governments, mostly overseas, are turning to in order to plug holes in their budgets.
It is amazing that none seem to have thought about going back to basics, and drawing a larger share of the needed revenue from the one tax base that can be tapped without distorting the economy, without driving productive activity elsewhere, without taking from producers that which they produce.
It seems to me that a municipality, or state, or federal government should tap the annual value of the land within its borders before it starts to tax the wages or purchases of its people. If the municipality fails to collect that rental value, then the state ought to be able to do it; if the state fails to collect it, then the federal government ought to collect it.
And should the municipalities wise up and collect the lion's share of the land rent within their borders, the state and federal governments have other like tax bases they ought to be tapping: the value of water rights, of the airwaves, of geosynchronous orbits, of airport landing rights at busy airports, pollution, non-renewable natural resources such as oil, natural gas, lithium, etc. [The classical economists called all these things "land," as opposed to capital or labor, the other two inputs to production.]
They don't need to get creative. They need to go back to basics: tax that which nature provides; tax that which the community creates -- not what individuals and corporations create.
This article describes some of the tax approaches that governments, mostly overseas, are turning to in order to plug holes in their budgets.
It is amazing that none seem to have thought about going back to basics, and drawing a larger share of the needed revenue from the one tax base that can be tapped without distorting the economy, without driving productive activity elsewhere, without taking from producers that which they produce.
It seems to me that a municipality, or state, or federal government should tap the annual value of the land within its borders before it starts to tax the wages or purchases of its people. If the municipality fails to collect that rental value, then the state ought to be able to do it; if the state fails to collect it, then the federal government ought to collect it.
And should the municipalities wise up and collect the lion's share of the land rent within their borders, the state and federal governments have other like tax bases they ought to be tapping: the value of water rights, of the airwaves, of geosynchronous orbits, of airport landing rights at busy airports, pollution, non-renewable natural resources such as oil, natural gas, lithium, etc. [The classical economists called all these things "land," as opposed to capital or labor, the other two inputs to production.]
They don't need to get creative. They need to go back to basics: tax that which nature provides; tax that which the community creates -- not what individuals and corporations create.
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