President State Chamber of Commerce and Industry

The changes, which encouraged councils to switch from site value rating systems to the Capital Improved Value rating system was a form of capital gains tax on one’s house and business and its introduction should be opposed. The C.I.V. rating means in effect you will be taxed for making improvements to your house, for example painting it, building extensions, putting in a swimming pool and so on” he said. “It will discriminate against homeowners and business people who will have to pay more for making improvements to their properties or who may even be discouraged from doing so.” Michael Porter The Herald 28/10/1987

History of Site Value Rating

Site Value Rating was first raised in the 1901 Legislative Assembly by Arthur Robinson, the Member for Dundas, but frustrated by the Upper House opposition. Resurrected three times over the next twelve years, a bill giving municipalities the option of site value rating was finally passed in the Upper House in November, 1913, by a sixteen to six vote. A few extracts from the debate are worth quoting: Mr Hagelthorin, Minister for Public Works: “This proposal is widely supported by the A.N.A., the Chamber of Manufactures and the Rating Reform League.” William Angliss: "My firm will lose more than it will gain from this Bill, because it is compelled to keep vacant land on which to run stock; but I am voting for it in the interest of the people of Victoria.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)

As long as the land monopoly is maintained, the few can take possession of what Nature free of charge has granted to everyone, and usury will penetrate the whole society, and we will have banks, which instead of being servants for the exchange of goods will become powerful extorters.

Professor Mason Gaffney

George's blend of radicalism and conservatism can puzzle one, until it is seen as a reconciliation of the two. The system is internally consistent, but defies conventional stereotypes. New Palgrave Dictionary of Economic Thought 1987 ...I’m very suspicious of people who take that point of view, I think it’s a substitute for having constructive ideas themselves. ..The word panacea is a scare word, it is used to intimidate people who have a solution, I refuse to be intimated. To me the wonderful thing about Site Value Rating the way it reconciles a number of ideas that in other philosophies and in the dominant philosophy today are considered to be incompatible. For example we can have a progressive tax system and we can have free markets and we can have incentives at the same time, these are not only compatible these are essential to each other. If the government imposes a rate on land and the rent that land yields, that not only allows land to put to its best use as defined by the free market. It encourages it! It’s not only compatible with the free market. Its more compatible than any other system. Furthermore it allows the government to untax labour, it allows government to untax exchange. The things that are the essence of the free market in are untaxed. The effects of the rate is highly progressive because the ownership of land is extremely concentrated. So what more could you ask for? Here’s a revenue system which is at the one time progressive and at the same time favourable to incentives. Association For Good Government Interview 1987