Suchergebnisse

Abstract. Consideration of a Federal Net Wealth Tax would help settle the question of the scope and limits of the taxing powers of the United States Government. The confusion attending this, which has prevented the federal government from taxing land and kept state taxation of land too low to bean efficient allocator of this resource, can be clarified. The Constitution's Article I, Section VIII, gave the federal government power to levy taxes, duties, imports and excises, as "indirect" taxes, requiring only that the duties, imposts and excises be "uniform throughout the United States." The 16th Amendment authorized a "direct" tax on "incomes, from whatever source derived." The intent of the Founding Fathers—almost all large landholders—was to prevent the new federal government from using land as a tax base. But the distinction between the types of taxes lacks economic meaning. By making the base of a new tax the net wealth of taxpayers. Congress could obtain a Supreme Court test to end the confusion. If the Court, following precedent, required that land be excluded from the tax base, this would assure land as a tax base to the states and permit them to tax it in a way to end speculative withholding of tracts and sites and to bring about orderly development according to current need.

Abstract Land value taxation (LVT) as desirable U.S. tax policy was brilliantly set forth by the American publicist and economist, Henry George, in the book Progress and Poverty, published 100 years ago. Economists concerned with state and local taxation have generally accepted the basic elements of George's analysis. The absence of substantial LVT legislation despite the economic efficiency and ethical strengths of land as a tax base arises from two sources. First, the public perception of land has not separated land's attributes from those possessed by other property. Second, land ownership data have not been gathered and publicized. Groups favoring taxes that promote economic justice and efficiency should support efforts to develop land ownership data. It would be an important first step toward fully utilizing the potential of LVT.

Abstract. If forest industry taxation is to be put on a sound economic basis, the Federal Government, the largest land owner, should pay the same taxes as any other landowner, so that the social and economic effects of taxation are realized. Specialists report that the form of the property tax preferred for the taxation of the property of the forest industry, under most circumstances, is land value taxation, not the property tax based on income realized at some point In the future which presumed the continued existence of virgin forests. This paper recognizes that the forest industry now is based on harvests of tree crops and proposes a further development of the land value taxation principle in the form of a forest tax composed of a land value tax combined with a tax on tree growth which increases as growth as a percentage of volume growth decreases with the tree's increasing age.