Land Value Tax should replace existing, damaging taxes.

We are not campaigning for an increase in the overall size of the government budget and hence the total amount of taxes to be raised; this is a wider decision and beyond out remit.

We are campaigning for Land Value Taxation and against most current taxes:

1. Existing property and wealth taxes (in descending order: Business Rates, Council Tax, Stamp Duty Land Tax, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Insurance Premium Tax and the TV licence fee) all have serious faults and could easily be replaced with an annual land value tax of about 30% of the site premium of UK land (i.e. the total market rental value minus the rental value of the buildings and improvements thereon). Mathematically, this would be just under 1% of current selling prices, and most households would pay the same amount of tax overall, averaged over a life time.

2. Value Added Tax acts like a domestic tariff of 20% on most goods and services apart from land-based activities, such as
- farming. Owners of agricultural land benefit from negative Land Value tax i.e. payments under the Common Agricultural Policy, which are unlikely to be scrapped, even if the UK were to leave the EU.
- housing. Domestic rental income is exempt from VAT and new housing is zero-rated, so home builders can reclaim VAT included in their costs but do not need to charge VAT on the sales of new homes.
- banking. Eighty per cent of bank lending is secured on land, the bulk of banks' income is mortgage interest, which is thinly disguised land rent.

3. National Insurance, which adds 25.8% to the cost of employing somebody under the Upper Earnings Limit, and thus depresses employment and encourages automation, even in marginal situations where it would be cheaper to pay wages if there were no National Insurance.

VAT and National Insurance therefore have significant dead weight costs and depress the size of the economy (and the number of jobs) by at least one-tenth.