USA: Tax thugs slam theft self-assessment software

Arizona Republic “Using a computer program to figure income taxes takes longer than doing it by hand, the IRS claims, infuriating the tax-preparation software industry. The accounting profession also is protesting the agency’s estimates of the costs of having a professional calculate various types of returns. The outcries are in response to what the Internal Revenue Service introduced in its latest tax instruction booklets as a new, ‘more accurate’ method of estimating the time and cost of filing. The figures are based on a survey of 15,000 taxpayers and 400 tax professionals, IRS spokesman Raphael Turino said. Since publishing the figures, the IRS has issued a statement online saying they are all but useless. Calling the data ‘fatally flawed,’ a trade group representing the makers of such programs as TurboTax and TaxCut urged this month that the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board investigate ‘this genuine mess.’” (02/23/06) http://tinyurl.com/qvqa3

USA: Grounds for change? Land tax is best remedy, says Libertarian

USA: Grounds for change? Land tax is best remedy, says Libertarian Debbie Gebolys Ohio could get rid of its slums, gain new buildings on vacant lots and stop suburban sprawl. It could even save the average homeowner a little money. So says retired Case Western Reserve economics professor Bill Peirce, the Ohio Libertarian Party candidate for governor. The way to change Ohio's landscape, Peirce says, is to throw out the property-tax system and replace it with another first proposed in 1880. Peirce doesn't harbor any illusions that he'll be living in the governor's mansion next year. But he hopes his maiden voyage into politics allows him to convey some alternative notions to voters. That's where land-value tax comes in. versions of the system are in place in Pennsylvania, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and Australia, among other places. It's been mentioned in Ohio several times in the last century, and people in Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Virginia and West Virginia are among those considering it. Here's how it would change things here: To make taxes fair, Peirce said, the state should abolish all tax incentives and allow market forces to dictate where construction goes. Then, it should upend the property-tax system, which has valued buildings at roughly three times the value of land for the last century or more. In its place should go a system in which land makes up at least half of the taxable value of a property. The value of buildings, if taxed at all, would be radically reduced. The result An end to tax policy that rewards owners of dilapidated and vacant properties with low tax bills and penalizes those who invest in their properties with higher tax bills. Since buildings become less important to total value, property owners don't pay higher taxes when they add a Florida room or build a 12-story office instead of a two-story. Owners of vacant lots or dilapidated buildings see their taxes rise to the level of similar-size properties nearby. The tax increase motivates slumlords to invest enough to pay the higher bill or sell out. When new buildings appear, surrounding land is worth more money, too. So as surban renewal beautifies neighborhoods, it raises their relative tax contribution. That means tax bills in other neighborhoods can come down. Since land becomes the prominent basis for taxes, people save tax money if they buy smaller lots. That could help stop sprawl. Does it really work like that? Joshua Vincent, executive director of two Philadelphia groups dedicated to land-value tax, said it does. He heads the Henry George Foundation of America, the lobbying arm of an international tax-reform movement, named for the 19 th-century inventor of the land-value tax. Vincent also runs the Center for the Study of Economics, which conducts feasibility studies for communities considering the tax system. "Everything we want, new buildings, improved buildings, is punished by taxation," Vincent said. "Land tax is the only way to tax without distorting anything." Of 19 Pennsylvania cities using landvalue tax systems, Scranton has been doing so longest, since 1913. All of the others adopted it since 1975, when the Midwest was becoming known as the Rust Belt. As the steel industry tanked in Pennsylvania, so did the fortunes of many of its towns. Cities like Altoona, Allentown, McKeesport and Harrisburg were in desperate straits when they adopted the tax system, Vincent said. "In one city, they couldn't pay the municipal light bill, so they turned off their street lights and stoplights. In Aliquippa, they laid off the entire police force," he said. "The reason they adopted land tax was to spare their citizens higher taxes, frankly." Land-value taxes accomplished at least one goal. Construction rose, and cities began to recover. "They're not in great shape now, but they're a hell of a lot better than they were," Vincent said. Pittsburgh used land-value tax until 2000, during its own severe economic decline. Several economists studied how it worked in Pittsburgh, where taxes on land were raised to more than five times the rate on buildings in 1979. They found that while Pittsburgh did have a 1980s building boom, other factors could have helped. Among them were tax breaks on new construction. Is Pennsylvania so much different from Ohio ? Candidate Peirce doesn't think so. "What we want is to make it easy for people to establish businesses and make them grow," Peirce said. "Let's get the economy moving enough so kids have a chance to stay at home rather than leaving the state." Ohioans need the urgency that prompted Pennsylvanians to change their system, he said. "The major (political) parties have our state in a perilous position with a difficult employment situation, a difficult economic situation and tax rates among the highest in the country," he said. Ohioans' state and local tax burden has skyrocketed in the past three decades, according to the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington that promotes lowering taxes and simplifying the tax system. In 1979, Ohio ranked 47 th nationally for the percentage of income people pay for state and local taxes. By 2004, Ohio had jumped to seventh. The state fared better when the Tax Foundation focused on 2002 property taxes per capita. Ohio's $933 per person ranked 23rd highest in the country. Pennsylvania ranked 28th, at $885 per person. Both were below the national average of $971. Ohioans before Peirce have proposed land-value taxation, most recently in the late 1990s. Gov. Bob Taft convened a committee to study how to make Ohio more attractive to businesses. A Cleveland State University economist suggested land value tax, said Frederick Church, deputy commissioner for tax policy in the Ohio Department of Taxation and a committee adviser. The idea was quickly discarded. "Land-value tax merits are a fairly abstract argument," Church said. "Completely overturning a property-tax system to encourage redevelopment of downtowns is a pretty blunt instrument for the problem at hand." Franklin County Auditor Joe Testa said taxpayers might have trouble accepting such a radical change. Neighboring houses on identical lots in Schumacher Place, for instance, are now valued at $150,000 and $500,000. "If you took away the building, because they are on the same size piece of dirt you would value them the same. Make them both what' Both $150,000 or both $500,000' " Peirce isn't saying exactly how tax bills would change, and that creates uncertainty for some observers. "Until you understand all the ramifications, it's hard to advocate one way or another," said David Beach, steering committee chairman of Greater Ohio, a land-use planning advocacy group. But in general, change could be good. "A different way of taxing land could have an impact on preserving our cities and towns," he said. "Tax policy is a very important issue, and it can influence where land is developed and whether it's easier to rebuild cities or build out in green areas." Because of that, "Peirce's idea is one that we might want to take a look at," Beach said... The Columbus Dispatch

...Signs of Trouble in Foreclosures

February 22, 2006 By VIKAS BAJAJ and RON NIXON ... The housing boom of the last decade helped push minority home ownership rates above 50 percent for the first time in 2004 and the overall foreclosure rate below 1 percent. But hidden behind such success stories lies a disturbing trend: in the last several years, neighborhoods with large poor and minority populations in places like Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta have experienced a sharp rise in foreclosures, in some cases more than a doubling, according to an analysis of court filings and other housing data by The New York Times and academic researchers. The increase in foreclosures could be the first of a wave of financial distress for many minority homeowners, experts say, because they are twice as likely as whites to have taken out expensive subprime mortgages, most of which will jump to higher interest rates in the next two years, according to an analysis of data that lenders disclose under the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. ...Some housing experts worry that the minority foreclosure rate could worsen if the economy or the housing market, nationally or regionally, hits a rough patch as it has in industrial Midwestern states like Ohio. ...The Mortgage Bankers Association of America plays down the severity of foreclosures, noting that most new minority homeowners are doing well and that the Midwest is facing unique economic challenges. ...In Cuyahoga County, court filings by lenders seeking to foreclose on delinquent borrowers totaled more than 11,000 in 2005, more than triple the number in 1995. ...A similar pattern can be seen in Chicago, where foreclosure filings tripled, to 7,576, from 1993 to 2005. ... The same trends have been documented in Atlanta and Philadelphia, according to researchers from Harvard and the Reinvestment Fund. ...Almost 70 percent of subprime loans issued since 2001 will shift from low, fixed introductory rates to higher adjustable rates in the next two years, according to an analysis by Fannie Mae. ...Mr. Douglas G. Duncan, the chief economist, Mortgage Bankers Association and others in the industry say that higher foreclosure levels in the Midwest should not be seen as worrying signals for the nation because the region's economic problems are unique. Ohio lost 215,000 jobs from 2001 to 2005, with 63,800 of them coming from the Cleveland metropolitan area. The state unemployment rate was 5.6 percent in December, up from 4 percent in 2000. The jobless rate in Cleveland was 5.5 percent in December, up from 3.8 percent. The Cuyahoga County treasurer James Rokakis, his county's 17 percent foreclosure rate is creating blight in many neighborhoods. ...In Slavic Village, about 500 homes, or 5 percent of its properties, are vacant, Mr. Rokakis said. "Who pays for the damage done to these communities?" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/business/22home.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Executives Modified Enron Data, Jury Is Told

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO Published: February 22, 2006 HOUSTON, Feb. 21 � The former chief executive of Enron, Kenneth L. Lay, took an active role in preparing misleading and often conflicting statements about financial conditions at the company, a former investor relations manager and board secretary testified on Tuesday. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/22/business/businessspecial3/22enron.html

Questionable liens hit Arizonans

Robert Anglen The Arizona Republic Feb. 22, 2006 12:00 AM A financial setup orchestrated by a convicted criminal has left more than a thousand homeowners in Arizona and California facing illegitimate liens on their homes. The liens are being used to force people to pay thousands of dollars to a California collection agency. In order to get the liens lifted, homeowners are told by the agency that they must pay credit-card debts that, in many cases, have already been paid, written off in bankruptcies or aren't actually owed. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0222lienfraud0222.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How is it that no one (except a mechainic) can but a lien on my car without my knowledge and consent while anyone, living anywhere in the world can put a lien on my house simply by filling out a few papers. This is nuts! If our law makers need some insentive to act on this, perhaps every homeowner in the state should put a lien on any property owned by every lawmaker. Once they realize that they have two hundred fifty thousand liens on their home the matter might be taken seriously. (William3700, February 22, 2006 05:49PM)

Let the good times average out nicely

Random Walk, by Rob Peebles ...Take California home prices, the turbo charger on the newfangled engine. In fact, take the number of homes in California that sold for more than $1 million last year, and this is what you get: You get 48,666 million dollar homes. That’s 47% more million dollar homes sold in 2005 than in 2004, according to the Los Angeles Times.  For the record, 48,666 million dollar transactions comes to 1 in 13 California home sales achieving status as a million dollar deal. That’s a nice ratio. And that ratio compares to “just” 1 in 20 in 2004. And that compares to 1 in 2, which is the ratio of Californians who want to quit their jobs to become real estate agents once they do the math on the commission involved in a million dollar transaction. According to DataQuick’s numbers quoted in the article, a million dollars in California will get you four bedrooms and 2,480 square feet, assuming you spring for the median million dollar home. Now 2,480 square feet is a fine sized home, but it wasn’t that long ago that for a million bucks you could get another couple of thousand feet and a butler.  The LA Times notes that there were 2,902 condo sales in the $1 million or more category last year, up a smart 73% from 2004. Sure, California real estate is hot, but homes are hot nationwide. Apparently there are one million homes around the country now worth at least $1 million. That compares to only 350,000 as recently as 2000.

'Doomsday' seed bank to be built

Rice is one of the world's most important crops Norway is planning to build a "doomsday vault" inside a mountain on an Arctic island to hold a seed bank of all known varieties of the world's crops. The Norwegian government will hollow out a cave on the ice-bound island of Spitsbergen to hold the seed bank. It will be designed to withstand global catastrophes like nuclear war or natural disasters that would destroy the planet's sources of food. Seed collection is being organised by the Global Crop Diversity Trust. "What will go into the cave is a copy of all the material that is currently in collections [spread] all around the world," Geoff Hawtin of the Trust told the BBC's Today programme. Mr Hawtin said there were currently about 1,400 seed banks around the world, but a large number of these were located in countries that were either politically unstable or that faced threats from the natural environment. "What we're trying to do is build a back-up to these, so that a sample of all the material in these gene banks can be kept in the gene bank in Spitsbergen. The Norwegian government is due to start work on the seed vault next year, when it will drill into a sandstone mountain on Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard archipelago, about 966km (600 miles) from the North Pole. Permafrost will keep the vault below freezing point and the seeds will further be protected by metre-thick walls of reinforced concrete, two airlocks and high security blast-proof doors. The number of seeds and types of plants in the bank would be determined by the countries wishing to use it. Rice paddy, AP http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4605398.stm

Increasingly uncomfortable living in a material world

Optimism about quality of life has slumped among Australians. ...In other words, we are seeing a profound loss of faith in a future constructed around notions of material progress, economic growth and scientific and technological fixes to the challenges we face. We no longer believe in the "official story" of the future on which our governments base their policies. Environmentalists and scientists have won the minds of the public. Now they need to win our hearts, to give us the courage to act on our convictions. Richard Eckersley is at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the ANU, and is the author of Well & Good: Morality, Meaning and Happiness (Text, 2005). SMH

Roseville to pry land from owners

North Metro Insider Sarah McCann, Star Tribune The Roseville City Council voted 3-2 last week to approve using eminent domain to acquire four commercial properties needed for the Twin Lakes redevelopment project. The mixed-use development includes housing, retail and office space. Developer Rottlund Companies, which owns most of the land, has been trying to buy the properties but hasn't come to an agreement with some owners. The council vote approving eminent domain could result in more serious negotiations, as eminent domain procedures can be costly and time-consuming for all parties involved. If the property owners don't agree to sell, the city could file for eminent domain in court as early as January. Although many local government officials say they use eminent domain as a last resort, a U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer said it was OK for cities to use eminent domain for economic development http://www.startribune.com/142/story/144702.html

Train Wreck of the Week: The end of the housing bubble.

by Bob Chapman The housing bubble is in the early stages of implosion. We do not know for sure how long the adjustment will take or are we sure how deep it will be, but we do know it has to happen and that the risks to our economy and the world economy are enormous. The only thing the Fed can do is keep interest rates relatively low and keep increasing M3, money and credit at a 12% plus rate. The downside is hyperinflation. If they move interest rates higher and cut back on monetary aggregates, they’ll have a depression. If they keep doing exactly what they are doing now, the economy will slide downward and inflation will relentlessly increase. The housing boom has reached almost every area of the country, money fled a collapsing stock market and was lured by low interest rates into housing. Low rates were assisted by lax lending standards engineered by the Fed. Sub-prime loans now make up over 50% of mortgages and with those come all sorts of exotic mortgages that borrowers do not understand and eventually won’t be able to service. That means many millions of Americans will go broke and bankrupt over the next several years. $11 trillion in real estate values in just a few years time could become $6 trillion in value. Sixty-five million Americans own homes and many put zero to 5% down, plus they have ARMS and zero savings to bail themselves out. Their other personal debt has doubled over the past three years as well. In addition, never has our financial system been more vulnerable. Thirty-six percent of recently purchased homes were second homes or speculative purchases. That is accompanied by record fiscal and current account deficits, derivatives and a stock market that cannot stay up while real estate is falling. The consumer is 76% of the economy and real estate and stock dislocation means less consumption and a falling economy. Low interest rates, endless credit and monetary printing presses won’t stop the onslaught. Just look at Japan when their real estate and stock bubbles began to implode in 1989. They lost $12 trillion in real estate values and a 42,000 Nikki Dow became 7,600. Why would our collapse be any less vicious? As the real estate bubble breaks and the bear market in stocks resume, Americans are faced every day with the loss of good paying jobs via offshoring and outsourcing. Thus, we can only conclude that our elitist Fed planned it that way. How can any nation consciously allow free trade and globalization in an advanced high-income economy? It’s simply suicide. We have been set up to deliberately fail along with Canada and Europe. By bringing these economies to their knees, citizens will be forced to accept universal, fascist, one-world government. Today’s debt and leverage makes the 1920s look like child’s play. You cannot have an economy that is 60% dependent on real estate. Industries such as construction, commodities, lending, brokerage, mortgages and insurance are holding America economically together. The parallels between now and the 1970s are huge, only this time we have enormous debt and leverage. We have another guns and butter economy. Look at our weekly statistics from the Fed, which they are going to cancel in March. Tremendous amounts of moving is being absorbed by the real estate market. Once that demand declines we would expect those funds to find new homes, perhaps Treasuries, gold and silver would be options. If the stock market is falling not many would want to risk funds there. The options for placing funds will be limited. The real question is how much money will come out of real estate? How much can as the losses pile up? All that equity will be disappearing and the piggy bank will be empty. Consumption could easily fall back to 62-64% of GDP. How can a market be solid and safe when you have to have new buyers whose average down payment is 3%? They’ll walk away from negative equity in a nanosecond. How many had to have mom and dad dig into their own home equity to buy that house? Worse yet, 45% of first-time buyers put down nothing on their new digs. Vertically rising markets are inevitably followed by vertically falling markets. And, remember, houses are not liquid. You cannot sell them on the spot and get payment in three days. You can be financially entrapped in your home. What happens when home equity falls and the market falls and you have your house as collateral in your brokerage account? It’s called a disaster - wipeout. We are seeing all the classic assumptions of an asset bubble. This frenzy underway over the past two years has given us 1.1 million real estate brokers, up 36% in five years. What idiot really expects house prices to rise 20% annually in the next 10 years? They’d have to be on drugs, which unfortunately, many of them are on. Just to show you how docile homeowners have become, 77% believe real estate is much safer than the stock market. What fools, all investing is gambling. More signs of mania in real estate as ads in newspapers rose 45% in the second quarter. That is 25% of all ads. That is $4.15 billion of $16.6 billion in classified ad revenue nationwide. In addition, online real estate ads now make up 15.9% of the total real estate ad market. Are you one of the people interviewed by the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index who believes now is a good time to buy a house, because its risk-free and virtually guaranteed to keep rising? If you are, we are sure we have a bridge that we are sure you would be interested in. Building is still booming. This year 38.1% put 5% down on their new homes and 45% put down nothing. If that doesn’t concern you it should. Forty percent of Californians are paying about 40% of their take home pay on their mortgages. They call this affording the unaffordable. We believe real estate market prices are unsustainable. Interest-only mortgages nationwide average 31%. In California, they make up 61%, and in Santa Rose and Vallejo, where they are 77% and 78% respectively. Would you have ever believed that bankers and the Fed would let this distortion go that far? Next year, 2006, about $300 billion in mortgage debt will enter its adjustable period. Borrowers will have to begin repaying interest and principal at new higher interest rates. Then there are buyers who take out two mortgages at once to buy a home. Standards there are no standards. It’s whatever the lender wants to do. There are no qualifications for a loan. You can be blind, crippled, crazy, bankrupt, unemployed, have no credit or income or be an illegal alien. Mortgage related assets now make up 50% of total bank assets and in just last year alone 24% of loans were sub-prime. While all this officially sanctioned madness goes on, foreigners are clamoring to buy mortgage-backed securities. If we are right they are going to have a terrible financial hangover. They are prolonging the boom by chasing a very dangerous yield. That yield is guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which we believe will be bankrupt in three years. Do you really believe the government will make these securities good in a depression? We don’t think they will. It is not only foreigners who’ll get bagged, it will also be hedge funds, insurance companies, and pension funds. These purchasers of these mortgages are buying desirable and undesirable loans. Last year they bought over $400 billion in sub-prime loans. Last year 70% of these loans had less than full documentation of the borrower’s income and assets. You know if house prices fall these loans will be a bag of worms. In the last four years homeowners have removed $550 billion in equity from their homes. Cash out financings are over 18% this year of all refinancings. Home equity is now 56.3% of real estate value. Forty-seven percent of all residential mortgages by dollar volume are now non-traditional. Equity from refinancings is being used to put food on the table. The Fed says homeowner loans added $600 billion to consumer spending last year and who are we to contradict the Fed. That is 7% of disposable income versus 3% in 2000 and 1% in 1994. If it weren’t for this infusion we’d already be in recession. If you’ve been attentive you now know real estate is in for changes. Sir Alan Greenspan is telling us the truth on his way out. “In the US there is a pernicious drift towards fiscal instability and the adjustment process will be painful.” Sir Alan, along with our elected dolts in Washington and the neocon White House have buried the US economy. This is not fiscal and monetary instability; it’s been insanity. Sir Alan said Congress has to make significant adjustments, in reducing benefits for future retirees because the US has promised benefits it cannot afford. He said government demands for investment would squeeze private capital formation and cast an even larger shadow over growth of living standards. In the end, he warned, the consequences for the US economy of doing nothing could be severe. Web source: http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/trainwreck.php?Id=103&PHPSESSID=9dab509e24326857b1c41f16545eb47a

Curitiba: A Global Model For Development

Tuesday, November 8, 2005 CommonDreams.org by Bill McKibben I could see as much green as I could concrete. And green begets green; land values around the new parks have risen sharply, and with them tax revenues. …At the moment, in the center of Novo Bairro, COHAB is building "Technology Street," an avenue of 24 homes, each built using some different construction technique-bamboo covered with plaster, say-so that people can get ideas for the kind of house they might want. The houses are all smaller than most Americans would want to live in, but they all say something about the people who built them. "It's a house built out of love," says the housing chief. "And because of that, people won't leave it behind. They're going to consolidate their lives there, become part of the city." …Hitoshi Nakamura is the city parks commissioner and one of Lerner's longtime collaborators. "We have to have communication with the people of the slums," he said one day as we were talking about the problems posed by settlers invading fragile bottomlands along the rivers. "If we don't, if they start to feel like falvelados, then they will go against the city....If we give them attention, they don't feel abandoned. They feel like citizens." Ed The most vaguest article I have ever read. To deliberate evade an explanation for the existence and perpetuating condition of vagabonds and pauperism and worse the author announces to the worlds Rentiers, 'there's a new crop of wage slaves ripe for the owning via the title to land they inhabit'. To not associate the cause of disparity, dispossession and inequality is an injustice. Instead reporting (pandering) to the speculative interests. Bloody typical. 4,000 word version

French government agrees air tax

Wednesday, 23 November 2005, 16:50 GMT The French government has approved plans for a new tax on airline tickets to boost aid for the world's poor. The tax, which needs parliamentary approval, would range from one to 40 euros depending on the distance travelled and type of ticket. Levied on every passenger boarding a flight in France, it could raise up to 210m euros ($248m; £144m) a year. President Jacques Chirac has been campaigning for an international air tax to help fight global poverty. He first raised the idea during the Word Economic Forum in Switzerland last January, saying an international tax of one euro should be charged on the 3 billion airline tickets issued each year. He has the support of the UK government, which has agreed to divert revenues from its existing Air Passenger Duty. In Chile, a $2 surcharge will be added to tickets on all outgoing flights from January 1 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4463204.stm

House Cuts Food Stamps for More than 220,000 Vulnerable People While Poised to Cut Taxes for Wealthy

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives passed a budget bill yesterday that changes eligibility requirements for the Food Stamp Program, cutting benefits for approximately 220,000 to 250,000 vulnerable people. The budget reconciliation bill aims to cut the Food Stamp Program by $675 million. "We are disappointed that the House made cuts to the Food Stamp Program and are poised to cut taxes for the wealthy. Their choice takes food from families struggling to make ends meet and puts more money in the pockets of those who need it the least," said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. "This is morally wrong and will make Thanksgiving bleaker for hundreds of thousands of hard-working families." ..."With hunger on the rise and the forces of nature exposing poverty anew, plans to cut this vital, proven program make no sense. House leaders should be ashamed of trying to preserve tax cuts for our nation's wealthiest people at the expense of basic assistance for working families struggling to put food on the table," Rev. Beckmann said. Last month the U.S. Department of Agriculture released the statistics on hunger and food insecurity for 2004. The number of people living in food insecure households has risen by nearly 2 million people (from 36.3 million individuals in 2003 to 38.2 million in 2004). More than 13 million children live in food insecure households. The number of people who live in households that suffer from outright hunger rose from 9.6 million to 10.6 million. These increases in hunger and food insecurity are sharper than in previous years. http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/1118-01.htm

Redistributing the Land, Hugo Chavez Style

Published on Monday, November 14, 2005 by the Toronto Star Analysts say president's land-expropriation plan a world away from disastrous Zimbabwean program by Jens Erik Gould The privately owned, 1,200-hectare Santa Isabel farm has grown sugar cane for decades, but Antiaga says the Venezuelan government will help him use the land to grow pumpkins, beans and squash. Under a land redistribution campaign led by President Hugo Chavez, thousands of rural poor like Antiaga are being granted rights to farm arable land traditionally concentrated in the hands of wealthy landowners. But Artiaga isn't waiting for the government to take the lead. He and other farmers are slashing the Santa Isabel cane with machetes and laying claim to land they say is rightfully theirs. "We're obligated to take this land because it is state land," says Antiaga, clad in a torn shirt dirtied by the rich soil. "Commander Chavez is with our movement." Venezuela's land-reform campaign has won support from the rural poor but has sparked criticism that it could infringe on private property rights. "In Yaracuy, there is no rule of law," says Santa Isabel owner Vicente Lecuna, who accuses state officials of encouraging peasants to settle on his property. He says farming co-operatives like Antiaga's have destroyed 40 per cent of his sugar cane. Chavez insists his government respects private property rights and contends that the land expropriations are being carried out only for public use or for social necessity in a country where most non-state land is owned by a small elite. In the latest stage of what he calls the "new socialism of the 21st century," Chavez has called on state officials to take over private land deemed "idle" or lacking property titles dating back to 1848. Soldiers have enforced some of the takeovers, at times denying owners and workers access to the land. In recent months, the government has extended its campaign to corporate-owned land. One state government expropriated an idle tomato processing plant from U.S.-based H.J. Heinz Co. and another seized a silo installation from Empresas Polar, Venezuela's largest food company. The state government paid Heinz $256,000 (U.S.) for its seized plant, distinguishing Venezuela's reform from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's massive land redistribution effort, which has not reimbursed thousands of white landowners for their seized farms. While critics say both the Venezuelan and Zimbabwean governments are giving land to peasants with little agricultural experience, Venezuela offers farming loans while Zimbabwean farmers severely lack resources to develop their land. With agriculture a small player in Venezuela's oil-dependent economy, it is unlikely that a fall in food production would cause the kind of food shortages and other crises it has in Zimbabwe, notes Orlando Ochoa, an economics professor at Andres Bello Catholic University in Caracas. Mugabe's reform also seized farms on the basis of race, targeting land owned by white farmers, while Caracas focuses on productivity and property titles, Ochoa says. Critics argue that the Venezuelan expropriations are concentrating more power in the government by giving peasants farming licences for — rather than ownership of — the land they farm. But Carlos Escarra, a constitutional lawyer and professor at the Central University of Venezuela, rejects this common criticism, saying peasants actually become property owners who lack only the right to sell their land. Chavez says that having co-operatives like Antiaga's farming on expropriated land will lessen Venezuela's dependence on imports by satisfying domestic deficits in food. And the government has launched a campaign to plant more than 200,000 hectares of new sugar cane and cassava to produce sugar-based ethanol gasoline. Yet Yaracuy farm owner Vladimir Rodriguez says it is ironic that the same government has not prevented co-operatives and extortionists from destroying more than $15 million worth of sugar cane on 33 farms in his state alone, according to his statistics. A state-run agrarian fund known as Fondafa also grants loans for farming machinery to co-operatives that have taken over private property without state permission and uprooted sugar cane crops. In one case of extortion, local delinquents — who farm owners say posed as landless peasants — murdered sugar cane farm owner Antonio Vieira after he refused to pay them to not destroy his crop. Yaracuy state secretary-general Col. Angel Yarza, who called on the government to take over 48 ranches, denied in an interview that he had seen large quantities of destroyed sugar cane. He assured that the state does not encourage land invasions, but will not intervene to protect privately owned farms. Antiaga says Yarza and other state officials are helping his group's long fight to take land away from owners like Lecuna, who for him represent a system of traditional land ownership that prevent the rural poor from acquiring farms or landing sustainable jobs. "We're human beings, too, and we have to eat," he says. But for farm owners, seizing private property and issuing loans to poor farmers is no solution to poverty and unemployment. "(The co-operatives) just want credits that they won't pay back," says Lecuna. "They're not going to produce." Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited

Henry George (1839-1897):

For justice to be done between men it is not necessary for the State to take the land; it is only necessary to take its rent...Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. Introduction: Protection or Free Trade A tax on land values is of all taxes that which best fulfils every requirement of a perfect tax. As land cannot be hidden or carried off, a tax on land values can be assessed with more certainty and can be collected with greater ease and less expense than any other tax, while it does not in the slightest degree check production or lessen its incentive. It is, in fact, a tax only in form, being in nature a rent - a taking for the use of the community of a value that arises not from individual exertion but from the growth of the community. For it is not anything that the individual owner or user does that gives value to land. The value that he creates is a value that attaches to improvements. This, being the the result of individual exertion, properly belongs to the individual, and cannot be taxed without lessening the incentive to production. But the value that attaches to land itself is a value arising from the growth of the community and increasing with social growth. It therefore properly belongs to the community, and can be taken to the last penny without in the slightest degree lessening the incentive to production. Progress and Poverty The way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost of production and checking supply. But land is not a thing of human production, and taxes upon rent cannot check supply. Therefore, though a tax upon rent compels owners to pay more, it gives them no power to obtain more for the use of their land, as it in no way tends to reduce the supply of land. On the contrary, by compelling those who hold land for speculation to sell or let for what they can get, a tax on land values tends to increase the competition between owners, and thus to reduce the price of land. Book 8, Chapter 3.

11,000 Brazilians Keep US$ 93 Billion Abroad, Mainly in Tax Paradises

Written by Stênio Ribeiro Friday, 04 November 2005 A survey by the Central Bank found that 11,245 Brazilians possessed US$ 93.243 billion in foreign deposits, investments, and business assets as of December 31, 2004. This amount represents an increase of 12.8% over the US$ 82.692 billion declared a year earlier. This information was provided Thursday, November 3, by the head of the Department in charge of Combating Illegal Financial Assets and the Supervision of Exchange and International Capital, Ricardo Liao. Liao attributed the increment to the increased global insertion of the Brazilian economy, stimulated by the growth in exports in recent years and the variation in the number of individuals and firms that filed declarations of Brazilian Foreign Capital Assets (CBE). The number of declarations this year, referring to calendar year 2004, rose by 623 in relation to the number filed in 2004, referring to calendar year 2003. According to Liao, the US$ 10.6 billion increase in this year's declarations was heavily influenced by mergers between domestic and foreign firms, as well as a US$ 5 billion increase in inter-company loans and the enhanced market value of Brazilian companies abroad. Liao said that, as in previous years, the greatest concentration of Brazilian assets was detected in the so-called tax paradises, due to the "facility offered by these countries for movements of capital." The largest sums of Brazilian capital have traditionally transited through the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, and Luxembourg.

Soldiers are the state

anti-state.com by Joel Wilcox "I find it strange, to say the least, that among those who call themselves anarchists, anti-statists, radicals and individualists, there are so many who are quick to defend soldiers who fight for the state while condemning those who take joy in the soldier's demise. The most common arguments are that we cannot blame the soldiers for the wars they fight because most of them are young and impressionable, brainwashed, impoverished or otherwise well-intentioned. It is demanded that the state is squarely to blame and, in fact, the soldiers themselves are additional victims. For this, we should compassionately give our sympathy and support to those who fight while reproaching that which they fight for. Now, I would expect these arguments from a dyed-in-the-wool statist or even a minarchist but again, from a self-described enemy of the state, such arguments are bizarre." http://tinyurl.com/bbskb

The myth of a social contract

Strike the Root by Jim Davies "Ever since monarchs first felt the rumblings of discontent, they reached for a way to justify their miserable existences in the eyes of those upon the product of whose labor they lived in luxury; for many centuries the 'Divine Right' theory did the job. ... The entire establishments of both State and Church did very nicely out of this scam for centuries. It began to unravel when a few bright minds began to wonder whether the underlying myth was supported by rational fact, and found it wanting; that enlightening process began in the 18th Century and came to full fruit in the 20th, by when few monarchies remained and none of those are more than figureheads (observe Charles and Camilla, currently on a US visit.) Alas, however, the dictators were replaced by an even more insidious myth: that of the 'Social Contract,' the idea that all members of a society have in some way agreed to bind themselves to certain standards and laws for the common good." http://www.strike-the-root.com/52/davies/davies7.html

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

If I were to re-write this book, I would offer a third alternative - the possibility of sanity - Economics would be decentralist and Henry Georgian. foreword to Brave New World

Samuel Gompers (1850-1924)

I believe in Land Value Taxation. I count it a great privilege to have been a friend of Henry George: First President American Federation of Labor:

Confucius 551-479 BC

Once, natural resources were fully used for the benefit of all, and not appropriated for selfish ends. This was the age of the Great Commonwealth of peace and prosperity.

William Blackstone: 1723-1780

The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, from the immediate gift of the creator. ...there is no foundation in nature or in natural law why a set of words upon parchment should convey the dominion of land. Commentaries

Avoid a VAT

Ernest S. Christian/Gary Robbins Our current tax system runs to more than 60,000 pages of laws, regulations and rulings. It's so confusing that many, if not most, Americans mail their return with no idea whether or not they've filled it out properly. ...However, a handful of tax reforms would do more harm than good....The proponents of this scheme (the so-called two-track system) propose a high-rate, value-added tax (VAT) of the type used in Europe, which is a hidden tax on wages, dividends and consumer purchases. ...the two-track system is a prescription for enormous expansion of government and escalating tax rates. The increasing taxes will especially burden the minority of voters subject to income taxes as well as the VAT. .... It would place a surtax on hard work, productivity and success. It would penalize Americans who have already succeeded and discourage others from even attempting to succeed. That's because even if they worked harder and more productively, they'd know that income taxes would take a large bite out of their earnings. A reasonable person near the income-tax threshold would likely decide that the increased income wasn't worth losing his exemption from the income tax and, in his view, having to start "paying taxes" for the first time. The Washington Times: Commentary

What you put online may be used against you!

...An alarming trend is developing at many universities where officials are searching Facebook profiles and Webshots accounts for incriminating photos to use against students. By Heights Editorial Board

GOP Plan to Tax You Out of House & Home

Chuck Muth ...the Jeffersonian notion that the nation would be stronger if more citizens owned their own homes, Congress in the early 1900s created the ìgovernment-sponsored enterpriseî known popularly as Fannie Mae (short for Federal National Mortgage Association). Fannie Mae - and its sibling, Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.), created in 1970 - are private companies which do NOT get direct money from taxpayers, but which DO enjoy some favorable treatment by the federal government in return for making home ownership more available to more Americans. The essence of these GSEs is this: They dont lend money directly to you, the home-buyer. Instead, once a bank lends you the $100,000 to buy your house, Fannie and/or Freddie buy your new mortgage from the bank. This is what is called the ìsecondary mortgage market,î and it immediately frees up that $100,000 lent to you for the bank to lend to another potential home buyer. This is an extraordinary benefit if you were #11 on the bankís lending list. Their purpose, then, is to help moderateñ and low-income families obtain the American dream of home ownership. ...Their purpose, then, is to help moderateñ and low-income families obtain the American dream of home ownership. ...In the old days,î before Freddie Mac, the 30-year fixed mortgage was almost unheard of in the home-lending market. Today, somewhere around 70 and 80 percent of such home mortgages are issued under such terms. The 30-year mortgage, combined with relatively stable and lower interest rates, have made monthly home-loan payments affordable for millions of average-income citizens who otherwise would still be renting instead of buying. ...once Fannie or Freddie buys your mortgage from the local bank, they generally do one of two things with it: They turn around and sell it to investors (often overseas investors who see the U.S. real estate market as a safe bet and want a piece of the action), or they retain the mortgage in their own portfolio, allowing Fannie and Freddie share-holders and investors to reap the profits from the interest you pay on your home loan. ...Franklin Raines (a former Clinton official; go figure), OVER-stated its earnings to shareholders by a whopping $11 billion. ...Rather than merely assuring accurate accounting, these members of Congress are considering an active role in actually manipulating the market and picking new winners and losers. opinion editorials.com guestcontributors

Lands of Catastrophe: The Case of India and Pakistan

Jayant Bhandari ...For imperialist rulers, it is the land — not people — that matters. ...Millions suffer every year in the subcontinent from a cycle of horrible floods and water shortages. Millions die of easily and cheaply treatable diseases. Hundreds of thousands die like flies — and nature gets the blame. ...Facts will continue to come to light..is really the result of human arrogance and stupidity...To "make the nation strong," the state of India controlled the cement industry. ...Cement houses were far less insulated and, in a final irony, they needed more wood for heating. So much for saving the trees...While the "environmentalists" and the state destroyed the natural order, the void in the construction industry was filled by corrupt bureaucrats...Kashmir is one of the world's most militarized zones...To enable them to prepare for war, Pakistan and India spend 3.9% and 2.5% of their GDPs respectively...The total deployed troops are a million strong. Lessons: ...the people in these countries should have learned long ago is that when the crisis strikes, the state disappears...human stupidity has no limits...the media will romanticize whatever they can...Millions will continue to die, suffer, and live in utter misery, and the people of these countries will keep electing the same rulers. The culprits and the victims are the same; they only change positions. ...Leftists in the West will keep blaming globalization and the free market for all these problems. http://www.mises.org/story/1951

What's So Eminent About Public Domain?

Tim Lee Or consider the newly formed Property Rights Alliance (a project of Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform) which sponsored a panel at last month's State Policy Network meeting in which lobbyists from the movie and recording industries shared the podium with grassroots activists fighting eminent domain abuse. The Alliance's founding press release lamented that "recent Supreme Court decisions gutting physical and intellectual property rights have left little choice but to unify and organize." ...The Eldred decision is a good example. Until 1909, an author could receive copyright protection for no more than 56 years, after which the work would fall into the public domain. But thanks to industry lobbying, Congress extended the terms in 1976, and again in 1998. As a result, no copyrights have fallen into the public domain since the 1970s unless their owners chose not to renew them. There's every reason to think Congress will grant another extension around 2018, when the current terms begin to expire. Despite the Constitutional requirement that copyrights be "for limited times," Congress has effectively made them perpetual, one extension at a time. ...By lumping together the very real threat of the government taking people's land with an imaginary threat of IP anarchists abolishing intellectual property, the copyright industry and its allies hope to portray themselves as defenders of traditional property rights. http://www.reason.com/hod/tl103105.shtml

USA: Huntington could become the first city in West Virginia to pass a payroll tax.

City council will meet next week to debate whether to impose the 1 percent tax on people who work in the city. The fee would replace Huntington's $2-a-week service fee, similar to Charleston's $1-a-week user fee. Instead of paying for police officers and street services, the payroll tax revenue would go toward paying down Huntington's skyrocketing employee pension debts. "Nobody's going to be happy with any tax. I'm aware of that," said Huntington Mayor David Felinton. "But I think this is a lot more fair than the user fee. You look across the border and you see all these other states have the ability to do things like this, but it's just brand new in West Virginia. I think all cities need more flexibility to do this." Cities like Pittsburgh, Columbus and Cincinnati have for years charged people up to 2 percent in payroll taxes for working there. Parts of surrounding states like Kentucky and Virginia also charge the fees. Until recently, West Virginia cities and towns had no authority to tax the income of their workers. Instead, places like Huntington and Charleston have adopted user fees, the across-the- board fee that generally helps pay for road repairs and police services. Payroll taxes, on the other hand, vary depending on a person's income, and the tax typically brings in a lot more money than $1- or $2-a-week service fees. Huntington, however, is the only city in West Virginia right now that's eligible to pass a payroll tax. State lawmakers approved a plan just last year to allow cities to charge the tax only if their employee pension plans are severely under-funded. Huntington is the only city so deeply in debt, with reserves to cover less than 3 percent of its future pension obligations. It has pension liabilities that top $117 million. "This (tax) is probably the most viable option the city of Huntington has, other than some sort of increased property tax," said Mark Muchow, fiscal policy director for the state Department of Revenue. The tax would affect any person or family in Huntington earning $10,000 or more a year. A household making that much would pay $100 annually, whether.the money supports one person or four. Someone with an income of $50,000 would owe $500, and someone making $250,000 would have to pay the city $2,500. If the tax passes, most people who work in the city will end up paying more than the $104 now charged for the service fee. Felinton said revenue from the tax would amount to about $8 million a year, all of which would go to pension payments. The city's service fee is bringing in $3 million a year, which helps pay for police and street services. If the payroll tax passes, those services would get some added support from money now being used to pay off pension debts. Felinton has brought up the possibility of passing a payroll tax in the pass, but other city leaders have shot it down in favor of other alternatives. Now, those options seem to be running out. Felinton said the city is likely to miss a state deadline in December to reconfigure its pension payments, a plan that would have allowed it to start a new contribution plan for new hires. "This is a bit tougher to sell," Felinton said. "This scenario isn't as good as (our other options were), but we have to do something and we have to do it sooner than later." Cities around the state have been examining several new funding options, like the payroll tax, that lawmakers approved last year. While most places don't have a choice of adding a payroll tax right now, cities do have the option of abandoning a business and occupation tax in favor of adding their own sales tax in order to boost revenue. Charleston City Council Finance Chairman Bobby Reishman said city leaders here aren't talking about changing the tax structure any time soon. The city has for two years charged a $1-a-week service fee for anyone who works in Charleston, and Reishman said that plan is working out well. "Some of those taxes have been set up for cities that are in real trouble, and we're in good shape," Reishman said. "We're collecting more than we used to, and we certainly don't want to raise taxes any more than we have to." Felinton plans to bring up the payroll tax at the Oct. 24 council meeting, and council members could vote on the option early at a meeting in mid-November. Contact writer Kris Wise at 348-1244. J Kennedy Bennett response to the Editor & K Wise. This regressive revenue measure was drafted by your city's privileged few, who do not receive the bulk of their income from wages but from tenant rents & monopoly interest payments. It will further alienate the wealth of the Produces and shift it to vested interest in land. Your article quotes Mayor of Huntington David Felinton as saying "Nobody's going to be happy with any tax. I'm aware of that." And then offering an alleged counter argument as "But I think this is a lot more fair than the user fee." Neither is fair nor economic and yet his first assertion is true. Nobody is happy with any tax because tax is theft it maybe legal but it is not moral nor economic. The economic alternative is to rate the value of land which the Mayor allegedly governs. None of your cities do this let alone the States or Federal Government. Taxation can only occur after wealth is produced and is therefore external to the economic transaction of its creation. The rent of land is the return for its use and is integral to the economic use and production process and is the just base by which public revenue should be raised. As the value of production and consumption is stored in the land on which it occurs land is traded in a monopoliconomy for a price which is capitalised rent. Fewer and fewer Americans are securing titles to the land. Due to the rising monopoly ownership laws. So that your cities are becoming wage slave centres of compliance and regulatory nightmares for the dispossessed and your public administrations are exporting these policies around the world. The debate is council should rate land via valuation notices with incremental increases in the dollar as all other imposts are struck off until the the single source of revenue achieves a site revenue society with the absence of land price and taxation a consequence. Poverty crime homelessness terrorism would all disappear with it. PS. In a revenue analysis, I am able to quantify what the magnitude is, of the amount of suppressed economic activity by the impost measure herein proposed. If I were to obtain the city's valuation data of all property values (which the Huntington Council should have.) I then can advise as to what the revenue base formulae is, for the highest economic integrity. To replace this proposed slum facilitating measure.

Woodrow Wilson, (1856-1924)

All the country needs is new and sincere thought, coherently, distinctly and boldly uttered by men who are sure of their ground. The power of men like Henry George seems to me to mean that.

Throw Away the Key: Thousands of U.S. Children Serving Life Without Parole

Haider Rizvi OneWorld US NEW YORK, Oct 12 (OneWorld) - While most nations have abolished laws on sentencing children to life without parole, the United States remains one of the few countries in the world where minors are still regularly condemned to spend their lives behind bars, a new report released by two leading rights advocacy groups points out. Currently, there are more than 2,000 child offenders in U.S. prisons serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed before the age of 18, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, an independent group based in Britain. Entitled, "The Rest of Their Lives," the 157-page report is the first-ever national study on the practice of trying children as adults and sentencing them to life in adult prisons without the possibility of parole. While many children in prisons are now adults, about 16 percent were between age 13 and 15 at the time of committing crimes, say authors of the study, which also reveals that nearly 60 percent of children are serving life sentences for committing a crime for the first time. "Kids who commit serious crimes shouldn't go scot-free," says Alison Parker, senior researcher with HRW and author of the report. "But if they are too young to vote or buy cigarettes, they are too young to spend the rest of their lives behind bars." Parker notes that states are increasingly handing down life sentences to children at a time when fewer children are committing serious crimes such as murder. In 1990, for example, 2,234 children were convicted of murder, and nearly three percent sentenced to life without parole, she points out. By contrast, in 2000, only 1,000 children were convicted, but nearly nine percent of them were sent to jail for life. "Untie the hands of state and federal judges," says Dr. William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International-USA. "Give them options other than turning the courts into assembly lines that mass produce mandatory life without parole sentences for children." In 26 states, the sentence of life without parole is mandatory for anyone who commits first-degree murder, regardless of age. Currently, outside the U.S., there are only 12 children facing life imprisonment without parole, say researchers, noting that the International Convention on the Rights of the Child forbids life sentencing without parole. The treaty has been endorsed by every country except for the U.S. and Somalia. Over 90 percent of children serving life sentences are convicted of committing murder, according to official figures. But researchers say they found that at least 26 percent of those convicted did not personally or directly cause the death. Citing an example, they say 15-year-old Peter A. was sentenced to death without parole for "felony murder." Peter had joined two acquaintances of his older brother to commit a robbery. He was waiting outside in a van when one of the acquaintances botched the robbery and killed two people. "I never shot or killed anyone," Peter told researchers in an interview. The report says a vast majority of children currently serving life sentences belong to Black or Latino families, estimating that Black children, for example, are 10 times more likely than white children to receive a life-without-parole sentence. The study also points out that many children in prisons are sexually abused by criminal gangs run by adult inmates. Challenging the notion that life sentencing without parole could be helpful in reducing the juvenile crime rate, the authors say they see no evidence of such a correlation. "For example, Georgia rarely sentences children to life without parole, but it has youth crimes rates lower than Missouri, which imposes the sentence on child offenders far more frequently," says Parker who asserts that public safety can be protected without subjecting children to "the harshest prison sentence possible." David Berger, a lawyer with Amnesty International, agrees with Parker. "Children who commit serious crimes still have the ability to change their lives," he argues. "It's now time for state and federal officials to take positive steps by enacting policies that seek to redeem children, instead of throwing them in prisons for the rest of their lives." In addition to seeking an end to the practice of life sentencing without parole, the human rights organizations are calling on the U.S. government to grant child prisoners immediate access to parole procedures.

Land records to be computerised in Kenya

All land records of Kenya will be computerised soon. "Kenyans can rest assured that the question of missing files is now a thing of the past," said Land and Housing minister Amos Kimunya yesterday as all rent cards will be available online." To begin with, information from three million land rent payment cards will be captured in a computer by December 2005. He said Nairobi title deeds; maps and letters will be available in digital form by next year at an initial cost of Sh18 million. The time taken to transact business will be reduced by half once all the data gets digitised." The ministry, after being fully computerised expects to collect Sh5.8 billion in land rates, up from Sh1.8 billion collected last year. Mr Kimunya said records already captured indicated that only 10 per cent of property owners paid their rent regularly.

Old figures to blame for wonky values

By Darren Goodsir and Bonnie Malkin October 5, 2005 (NSW) The State's property valuers are using outdated sales data to make land calculations and there was "insufficient time and resources" to check their determinations, the Ombudsman's report has concluded. The eight private firms instructed by the Valuer General's Office to assess properties in the 152 local government areas were charging as little as $1.77 per valuation and their analysis was often threadbare and cursory. The "contestable contract" system, introduced in 1996, had reduced the cost of performing valuations in real terms. But the Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, said "the productivity savings arising from the deployment of reduced resources has started to impact on the quality of valuations …" This "may have reached the point where the costs cannot be driven down further without seriously undermining the methodology." Poor valuations had been arrived at because of a gap between the time sales data were received and when calculations were made. In a sample of 44 districts, the Ombudsman found 44 per cent of sales figures were between two and six months old and 25 per cent were six to 12 months old. Staff had no training in statistical anomalies or in the potential effect of data fluctuations, and this had compounded the errors. The report upheld the integrity of the Valuer General's complaints handling process, which it said was "far more thorough than many people believed". "However, there is still room to make it more transparent, consistent and accountable," the report said. Mr Barbour said the Valuer General failed to give property owners the most relevant comparable sales used to value their property unless requested. "It is unacceptable that the Valuer General failed to analyse objection trends and outcomes as his own 'health check' of the valuation system and had not implemented standard objection procedures to guide decision making," he said. The Sydney lawyer whose complaints prompted the Ombudsman's inquiry, David Singer, said the report uncovered such abuses of the system that it demanded a judicial inquiry. He said the "unholy mess" would continue to cause political disquiet. "This is only the beginning of the huge abuse of proper conduct in the valuation office in this State," he said, adding that the Government would come under pressure to drop the 1.7 per cent tax on land value or risk being accused of gouging. Philip Jenkyn was one of more than 20,000 property owners who contested the valuation they were given in 2003. Mr Jenkyn's three-bedroom house in Hunters Hill was considered to be worth $950,000, even though it was heritage-listed and could not be extended or extensively renovated. "The Valuer General valued the property that I own plus some adjoining properties without taking into account the fact that they were heritage-listed properties," Mr Jenkyn said. "I wrote a letter to the Valuer General saying they should have taken that into account and they had the typical response: get lost." The Land and Environment Court eventually ruled that the Valuer General should take into account the heritage aspect of the house. An independent valuation said the property was worth $650,000, a figure the Valuer General accepted. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/old-figures-to-blame-for-wonky-values/2005/10/04/1128191720175.html#top

Bodgie values to force up land tax bills

By Bonnie Malkin Urban Affairs Reporter October 5, 2005 Many property owners face higher land tax bills - and every NSW property will have its value re-assessed - after an Ombudsman's report attacked a culture of bodgie valuations and cost cutting which has resulted in 650,000 properties being under-valued. Despite widespread criticism that the Valuer General had routinely inflated land values, the report actually found 80 per cent of errors were linked to properties being under-valued. About 35 per cent of 2.4million valuations investigated contained errors more than 15 per cent outside a proper valuation. A spokesman for Mr Iemma, Ben Wilson, said it was too early to determine the precise fallout but added: "Obviously, if some properties are being under-valued [for land tax] this will have budgetary implications." The 1.7 per cent land tax is levied on residential investment properties and all commercial and industrial properties. However, from January a $330,000 tax-free threshold will be reinstated, meaning 350,000 property owners will escape the tax. In his special report to Parliament, the Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, criticised almost all aspects of the land valuation process, saying no uniform standards applied. The report found the Valuer General's office failed to take enough time to check the accuracy of valuations made by contractors, which led to "an unacceptable risk of error". As a result, 35 per cent of valuations had a margin of error of more than 15 per cent. One in 10 valuations had discrepancies of more than 40 per cent, with 20 per cent of all errors involving over-valuations. Mr Barbour said it was likely the mass under-valuation meant land tax would rise but "people wanted to have a fair system in place". "People will have more confidence in the system, it will be fair and they will know it's a much more reliable valuation when they get it," he said. The errors had occurred because the Valuer General had failed to hold a systematic review of baseline valuations for 16 years, despite international standards recommending reviews every six years. Mr Barbour said a property-by-property review was "well overdue". The investigation also revealed a quarter of all objections to valuations had been upheld. "This reflects poorly on the general standard of accuracy currently being achieved through the mass valuation process," he said. Mr Barbour also criticised the objection process for not giving property owners clear guidelines on how to lodge a complaint, although he said the overall complaints handling procedure was fairer than many critics had suggested. The Valuer General, Philip Western, said he had accepted all the Ombudsman's 38 recommendations, and some changes had already been introduced. "The valuation system is sound but there needs to be more checks and balances and I'm in the process of implementing that." Mr Western said only 1 per cent of the 2.4 million valuations were contested each year. The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Debnam, said the report proved the system was flawed. "The Ombudsman has pointed out time and time again the land tax valuations were inaccurate." Unsound land valuations affect councils - and council rates - as well as individual property owners. Earlier this year, Hornsby Council was forced to buy a quarry it valued at $3million but the Valuer General said was worth $26million. Hunters Hill Council had a similar problem when a small piece of waterfront land was valued at $2.5million. The council expected it to be worth $1million, took the case to the Court of Appeal but lost. HOME TRUTHS The worst-hit areas NORTH SYDNEY: Valuations out by more than 25% on 44.1% of sales, and by more than 40% on 23.5% of sales. MOSMAN: Valuations out by more than 25% on 53.2% of sales, and by more than 40% on 21.3% of sales. LEICHHARDT: Valuations out by more than 25% on 30% of sales. CITY OF SYDNEY: Valuations out by more than 25% on 29.5% of sales, and by more than 40% on 10.6% of sales. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/bodgie-values-to-force-up-land-tax-bills/2005/10/04/1128191720172.html#

Tenants Union Report 1992

'Existing laws fail to provide for controlled and affordable levels of rent, adequate minimum standards of housing and security of tenure,” Penalties for offending landlords or agents , therefore, do not reflect the financial gains that drive investors. Tenants have become increasingly reluctant to object or complain about breaches of the act for fear of being blacklisted as a troublemaker or evicted, says the report, particularly since a database on tenants was established in 1987.

Seven Nobel Prize Winners Endorse.

Milton Freidman “I share your view that taxes would be best placed on the land, and not on improvements.” Herbert Simon: “Assuming that a tax increase is necessary, it is clearly preferable to impose the additional cost on land by increasing the land tax, rather than to increase the wage taxes - the initiatives open to the City (of Pittsburgh). It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for the municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget- fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works, The average increase in tax bills of city residents will be about twice as great with wage tax increase than with a land tax increase.” Paul Samuelson “Pure land rent is in the nature of a ‘surplus’ which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency.” A land value tax can be called ‘the useful tax on measured land surplus.” James Tobin “I think in principle it’s a good idea to tax unimproved land, and particularly capital gains (wind falls) on it. Theory says we should try to tax items with zero or low elasticity,and those include sites.” Franco Modigliani “It is important that the rent of land be retained as a source of government revenue. Some persons who could make excellent use of land would be unable to raise money for the purchase price. Collecting rent annually provides access to land for persons with limited access to credit.” Robert Solow “Users of land should not be allowed to acquire rights of indefinite duration for single payments. For efficiency, for adequate revenue and for justice, every user of land should be required to make an annual payment to the local government equal to the current rental value of the land that he or she prevents others from using.” William Vickery American Economics Association, “It guarantees that no one dispossesses fellow citizens by obtaining a disproportionate share of what nature provides for humanity.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

“There is a common tendency to ignore the poor or to develop some rationalisation for the good fortune of the fortunate.”

Noam Chomsky

“Freedom without opportunity is a devil's gift, and the refusal to provide such opportunities is criminal”— Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order: Doctrines and Reality,

Thucydides

“As the world goes, right is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”—The Peloponesian War, Book V, section 89

Amira Hass

“What journalism is really about - it's to monitor power and the centres of power.”

Rev. Dr. Matin Luther King, Jr.

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

Clare Short UK International Development Secretary

“To tackle the underlying roots of violence and conflict, we need a massive international effort to reduce poverty and injustice, and to promote development, democracy and human rights.”— Speech to Labour Party Conference, Brighton UK, October 2001.

Henry Thomas Buckle, (1821-1862)

The landlords are perhaps the only large class whose interests are diametrically opposed to those of the people.

William Penn (1644-1718)

Fruits of Solitude: If all men were were so far tenants to the public that the superfluities of gain and expense were applied to the exigencies thereof, it would put an end to taxes, leave not a beggar, and make the greatest bank for national trade in Europe.

Richard Cobden, (1804-1865)

You who shall liberate the land will do more for your country than we have done in the liberation of its trade.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

The whole land (of Attica) was in the hands of a few, and if the cultivators did not pay their rents, they became subject to bondage...

UK Chancellor of the Exchequer

There never was a time (1930s depression) when the need was greater than it is today for the application of the philosophy and principles of Henry George to the economic and political conditions which are scourging the world ... Permanent peace can only be established when men and nations have realised that natural resources should be a common heritage. 1st Viscount Philip Snowden, (1864-1937)

Will fall wholly on the landlords.

A land tax levied in proportion to the rent of land, and varying with every variation of rents . . . will fall wholly on the landlords. - Walker's Political Economy, page 413.

Identifies the current land tenure system as:

"the one great imperfection, the snag on which freedom catches." Richard Noyes New Hampshire State Representative editor Now the Synthesis: Capitalism, Socialism, and the New Social Contract

Worldwatch Oct. l988

According to a 1985 government report, 2% of landowners hold 60% of the arable land in Brazil while close to 70% of rural households have little or none. Just 342 farm properties in Brazil cover 183,397 square miles--an area larger than California.

Land Rush-A Survey of America's Land

- Who Owns It, Who Controls It, How Much Is Left. At best, a generous interpretation would suggest that about 3% of the population owns 95% of the privately held land in the U.S. Peter Meyer; Harpers Magazine, Jan.1979

How the Other Half Dies

The most pressing cause of the abject poverty which millions of people in the world endure is that a mere 2.5% of landowners with more than 100 hectares control nearly three-quarters of all the land in the world, with the top 0.23% controlling over half. Susan George, Penguin Books,1976, p.24

Agnes de Mille (1905-1993)

"We have reached the deplorable circumstance where in large measure a very powerful few are in possession of the earth's resources, the land and all its riches, and all the franchises and other privileges that yield a return. These monopolistic positions are kept by a handful of men who are maintained virtually with- out taxation . . . we are yielding up sovereignty."

Distraction from the economic No#2

Opening statement to the Paliamentary Inquiry into Local Government cost-shifting inquiry 5 September 2002: Canberra paragraph 20 There is a suggestion that local government's taxation base could be broadened. This option is certainly worthy of further consideration, but I suspect that there is something of a quid pro quo in that, if local government were to expand its tax base, our constituents-whom we share with the other levels of government-would expect that, if we were taxing for a function, there would be an offset and the other levels would not be taxing for that purpose. Councillor John Ross President (2000-02) Australian Local Government Association

Perry Prentice

In 1969 gave a figure of 526 Companies owned 22% of all privately owned land. past president of Time Inc

South Africa-PROPERTY RATES BILL, 2003

MEMORANDUM ON THE OBJECTS OF THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT: 1.2 Municipalities derive their power to levy property rates directly from the Constitution (see in this regard section 229(1) of the Constitution). "Property" is not defined in the Constitution and is construed in context to mean land including any immovable property on or in the land or under the surface of the land.

What is the General Rate ?

AS it is assessed to land values, not from a persons labour. The General Rate is not a tax as theory defines taxation. It used to fund part or all of activities that are of “public benefit” where no other direct source of revenue is identified as appropriate to cover the cost of the activities. A person enterprise, entrepreneurship, labour nor capital is fined in anyway.

Distraction from the economic No#1

“We simply cannot survive on rates alone,” Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey, Chair of the metropolitan mayors meeting in Wellington discussion on funding issues facing local government.

Shifting the Incidence of Taxation:

"If land is taxed according to its pure rent, virtually all writers since Ricardo agree that the tax will fall wholly on the landowner, and that it cannot be shifted to any other person, whether tenant, farmer or consumer... the point is so universally accepted as to require no further discussion." E.R.A.Seligman

An Introduction to Positive Economics

"The tax cannot be passed on to consumers." Richard G. Lipsey 5th edition, London, 1979, p.370

Eminent-Domain Battle Flares in Connecticut

...State House Minority Leader Robert M. Ward (R) called for a special session to enact a moratorium on property seizures, and homeowners vowed to continue fighting...Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R) and state lawmakers had urged local governments to refrain from seizing property for development. Rell also favors a special session on the issue, a spokesman said. A group that won a Supreme Court victory allowing it to seize property for development is telling residents to vacate their homes in the latest flash point in a nationwide controversy. ...Notices order to vacate within 30 to 90 days and start paying rent to the development corporation during that period, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington-based group representing the homeowners. Associated Press Wednesday, September 14, 2005; Page A17

Invasion of the Reluctant Renters

...From San Antonio to St. Louis to Atlanta, the economies of these cities have chugged along in recent years, missing out on the booms and busts on the East and West Coasts. Yet there has long been a glut of empty apartments in these areas..."It's been a double-edged sword," said Mark Fogelman, president of Fogelman Management Group, which owns more than 5,500 apartments in the Memphis...Before Hurricane Katrina hit, Houston and Dallas had the two highest vacancy rates in the country, according to Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Brokerage Company, in Encino, Calif. More than 10 percent of apartments were empty in both cities. Memphis and Atlanta were not far behind...Nationally, the average vacancy rate is 6.5 percent. Memphis, Dallas and Houston were among the few big metropolitan areas in the country where rents were continuing to fall in the first half of 2005, according to Global Real Analytics, a San Francisco research company that publishes the National Real Estate Index. Landlords were often forced to offer a month or two of free rent during the first year of a lease. Office space was also sitting empty. Before the storm, nearly one in four square feet of office space in Dallas was vacant, according to Marcus & Millichap. By ERIC DASH and DAVID LEONHARDT Published: September 16, 2005 NYTimes.com

Shadow Government

We have to watch the redevelopment in New Orleans for a lot of reasons, and one of them is to make sure that the shadow government of the rich and the powerful does not end up abusing eminent domain to take property that belongs to poor people in order to get them out of the city. US Rep. Maxine Waters

USA:Friends Services Committee - New census poverty figures mandate closer look at proposed federal budget cuts.

Eliminating Safety-net Programs for the Poor in Favor of Tax Cuts for the Rich -- while 37 million live in poverty -- is immoral, Group Says Philadelphia, PA — August 30 — Responding to the release of new Census Bureau poverty figures today, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international social justice organization, calls on Congress to adopt a moral budget that helps people meet their basic needs. In its Current Population Survey, the Census Bureau reports that over one million more people lived in poverty in 2004 than in the previous year. Data also show that nearly six percent of the U.S. population lived in extreme poverty, defined as below 50 percent of the poverty threshold. “Today’s Census Bureau report should be a wake-up call for our nation,” said Roberta Spivek, AFSC’s national representative for economic justice. “At a time when at least one in every eight people in our country lives in poverty, Congress is poised to cut $35 billion from survival programs like Food Stamps and Medicaid. At the same time, it is considering $70 billion in tax breaks that will mainly benefit the most affluent households.” African Americans, Native Americans, and indigenous peoples of Alaska had the highest extreme poverty rates of people surveyed. People who were foreign born were more likely to live near the poverty threshold or in extreme poverty than were those who were native born. Nationwide, 37 million people, including 13 million children, live below the official poverty line of $9,643 for one person and $19,311 for a family of four. Nearly one in five U.S. children is poor. AFSC is conducting a Save Our Services (SOS!) campaign that calls attention to inequities in the federal budget. The campaign urges Congress to avoid cutting essential services and to reject tax cuts that benefit a few, when it completes its work on the fiscal year 2006 federal budget this fall. “How our nation responds to poverty is a moral issue,” emphasizes Kathryn Kurtz, associate director of the AFSC community relations unit. “Congress can either adopt tax and budget policies that will increase income inequality and poverty, or it can choose policies that promote the common good and the values of dignity and equality.” “Many experts believe the official poverty threshold is too low, and seriously underreports the true extent of U.S. poverty,” Spivek adds. The Service Committee is also campaigning for an increase in the minimum wage and working to keep Social Security a public, not private, program. Social Security is widely regarded as one of the most effective U.S. anti-poverty programs. For information on AFSC’s Campaign see, SOS! The Census Bureau report is available at www.census.gov

Asia's Children Pay for Skewed Priorities, Report

Marwaan Macan-Markar BANGKOK, Aug 22 (IPS) - Asian countries have failed their children, charges a leading development agency in its report that reveals a staggering 600 million children in the region condemned to a life of abject poverty and deprivation. The denial of such basics as food, safe drinking water, health and shelter to these children exposes a failure of the region's much vaunted economic growth rates and rapid development, states Plan International in the report, 'Growing Up in Asia,' released Monday. ''We will be judged by future generations, future centuries, when they write the history and compare us, maybe, to the holocaust,'' Michael Diamond, head of Plan's Asia division, said here at the launch of the 88-page report. ''This is truly catastrophic''. ''We sat on our hands when HIV began and we see the result of inaction,'' he added. ''We are doing little about it (child poverty in Asia)''. Such a dismal reality for nearly half the region's children comes despite the general availability of food in most countries, adds the report pointing to South-east Asia, which has enjoyed rapid economic growth. ''The proportions (of malnutrition) remain disturbingly high even in South-east Asia. This is surprising since in most of these countries there is no absolute shortage of food''. Currently, close to 47 percent of children in South Asia are malnourished, while South-east Asia has 29 percent malnourished children, according to a United Nations report released earlier this year. In sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, 31 percent of the children are malnourished. The still high child- mortality rates are another indicator of ''economic growth and globalisation'' failing to touch the lives of the region's most vulnerable, states the Plan report. ‘'Millions of children in Asia are still dying before reaching their fifth birthday, usually from a combination of malnutrition, preventable diseases and injury,'' according to the report. Consequently, countries across South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific will fall short of the targets they pledged to meet by 2015 for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), it states. Under the MDGs, governments agreed to pursue eight time-bound targets. They include halving the number of people living in extreme poverty, reducing by two-thirds the under-five mortality rate, achieving universal primary education, improving maternal health and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. In South Asia, that would mean trying to bring down the under-five mortality rate to 43 per 1,000 live births by 2015, as opposed to the 2001 figure of 99 children under-five dying for every 1,000 births. In East Asia and the Pacific, it called for reduction in the under-five mortality rate of 20 for 1,000 live births by 2015, as against the 2001 figure of 44 under-five children dying for every 1,000 live births. In 1990, which serves as the base year for the MDGs, there were 129 children under-five dying for every 1,000 live births in South Asia and an under-five mortality rate of 59 for 1,000 live births in East Asia and the Pacific. The report also took to task countries for depriving children of basic sanitation. ''The most severe deprivation, in terms of number of children affected, is a lack of access to sanitation. South Asia and East Asia levels are the worst in the world''. In South Asia, only 34 percent of the population had access to sanitation facilities, while only 46 percent of the population in East Asia and the Pacific had access to sanitation. Among the factors that have contributed to this grim reality are rapid urbanisation, bad governance and corruption, states the report. ''The consequences of urbanisation for the poor are severe. It hinders development of rural areas where the bulk of the population still lives''. The domination by elites, ranging from landlords and industrialists to bureaucrats and army officers, has resulted in the ''concentration of the gains from any economic growth with the elites''. In addition, the report notes: ''Public expenditure is generally diverted away from the needs of the poor, in the name of economic growth towards tertiary education, military expenditure; privatisation initiatives (and) debt servicing''. The Indian government, for instance, spent close to 0.9 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health in 2000, while spending 2.5 percent of its GDP on its military that year, states the report. Neighbouring Pakistan spent 0.9 percent of its GDP on health in 2000, while spending 4.5 percent of GDP on its military expenses that year. And at the local level, ''corruption plays a large role in the lives of the poor,'' it states. ''Public services which are meant to be free, such as drinking water, education, health and law enforcement, are subject to bribes and delays, keeping many, and especially the poorest, from receiving them''. http://www.oneworld.net/external/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ipsnews.net%2Fnews.asp%3Fidnews%3D29982

Pledge to lower cost of housing

Tanya Giles Herald Sun p25 A whole generation was at risk of being forever locked out of the housing market, the nation's leaders were warned yesterday. ...locazl state and federal governments yesterday reached a agreement to tackle the shortage of affordabel homes. The joint Ministerial Council of 20 planning, housinhg and local government ministers, chaired by Victorian Housing Minister Candy Broad, met in Melbourne yesterday to develop a national plan ...The latest research shows shows no houses in Melbourne were affordable for households with the lowerst 40% of income in 2003, as they only had enough money to buy a property worth less than $152,173...With avg 7yrs to pay HECS debt....expected to get bigger...& casualised jobs without security.

Ten Thousand Commandments

Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr ...Reports that regulatory costs exceed all pretax corporate profits ($745 billion) and all personal income taxes ($765 billion). The number of pages in the Federal Register, where new regulations are published, has increased 6.2 percent to 75,676 pages-an all-time record. ... On the basis of estimates from the Weidenbaum Center and the Mercatus Center, agencies spent $36.3 billion merely to administer and police the regulatory state in 2004. Counting the $877 billion in off-budget costs, that brings the total regulatory burden to $913 billion. Annual Snapshot of the US Regulatory State

Property bubble set for three-year deflation

Access Economics Director Chris Richardson Calls on the Reserve Bank not to raise interest rates. "Australia is the most interest-rate sensitive nation in the world". The Age.

Origin of the economologist

e·con·o·my   (-kn-m) n. pl. e·con·o·mies a. The system or range of economic activity in a country, region, or community... b. A specific type of economic system... An orderly, functional arrangement of parts; an organized system: “the sense that there is a moral economy in the world, that good is rewarded and evil is punished” (George F. Will). Efficient, sparing, or conservative use....The least expensive class of accommodations... Word History: ...The word economy can be traced back to the Greek word oikonomos, ... derived from oikos, “house,” and nemein, “to manage.” From oikonomos was derived oikonom, ... “public revenue of a state.” first recorded ... 1440, is “the management of economic affairs,” ... of a monastery. Economy is later recorded in other senses shared by oikonomi in Greek, ... current sense, “the economic system of a country or an area,” seems not to have developed until the 19th or 20th century. ogy or -ology suff. Science; theory; study: ie;. dermatology. Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. a): gist   (jst)n. 1. The central idea; the essence. 2. Law. The grounds for action in a suit. [From Anglo-Norman (cest action) gist, (this action) lies, third person sing. of gesir, to lie, from Latin iacre. See y- in Indo-European Roots.] b): gist Pronunciation: 'jist Function: noun Etymology: Anglo-French, in the phrase laccion gist the action lies or is based (on), from gisir to lie (of process), from Old French gesir to lie, ultimately from Latin jacere: the ground or foundation of a legal action without which it would not be sustainable. Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc. c): gist n 1: the central meaning or theme of a speech or literary work [syn: effect, essence, burden, core] 2: the choicest or most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience; "the gist of the prosecutor's argument"; "the heart and soul..."; "the nub of the story" [syn: kernel, substance, core, center, essence, heart, heart and soul, inwardness, marrow, meat, nub, pith, sum, nitty-gritty] Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University Word History: Source: Economology is a branch of economics, which theory is to determine the factual indepth delineations of site values within a municpality for rating purposes. Rather than the pooling of economically dis-similar properties that hide or mis-represent the real consequences of taxation. Economology denotes public revenue from privileges. (titles, licences, patents, copyrights, together without taxation on production consumption or employment). This absence of land price and taxation is described as a site revenue society. (Site Rating Defence. Melbourne, Australia 2004)

The US City-Its Greatness Is at Stake!

The fact that an improvement leads straight to a higher tax assessment is the reason why slum landlords find it more profitable not to improve the buildings on their overpriced, under rated land. The profit motive is harnessed backwards’ and given a tax incentive not to eradicate slums. Landlords who permit their properties to deteriorate are rewarded with lower assessments. “Rewarding also by this revenue system are the speculators who, because of low rates on land can afford to hold land out of use until the city’s growth forces up its price. This is a direct cause of ‘urban sprawl,’ as developers reach out for lower-priced land while passing idle land that is closer to the city but whose owner is not ready to sell. Urban sprawl means that the city enjoys a less than economic density of population while suburbanites have to move farther out than they should. Lower taxes (if any) on improvements and higher rates on idle land would induce a more efficient use of all urban and suburban land. ...To attract the necessary funds, we need maximum participation by private investors and private builders and operators. LIFE Magazine, Dec 24, 1965

The Profitable Slums

...these tax policies make slums the most profitable of all housing investments; they often make it more profitable to let property decay than to keep it up or improve it; they often make it more profitable to misuse or under-use land than to put land to its optimum use; they give speculation in vacant land such preferential tax treatment that they set apart from the market action of supply and demand. ..ours is a tax-activated, tax-accelerated, tax-directed, tax-dominated economy. Every business decision has to be checked against its tax consequences; and when property owners check the tax consequences of using land better versus using land worse, or spending money for improvements versus letting properties decay, they find, too often, that our tax system penalises what is socially desirable and susidizes what is socially undesirable. ...here is the two-fold way our tax system harness the profit motive backwards in the building industry: The first way is that our system taxes the value of unimproved or under improved land so lightly that land owners are under no pressure to sell until they are offered many times what the land is worth; and so lightly that there is no tax restraint on its price. So the price of the land- which reflects the capitalised difference between the rent the land can be expected to earn and the taxes it must expect to pay-has soared clear through the roof. The home builders have voted three to one that this land price inflation is their number one problem in trying to meet this country’s need for better housing. ...the second way our tax system operates against our best interests is the manner in which it taxes improvements. Our system taxes improvements so heavily that it makes slums the most profitable of all real estate investments. And so our slums are still spreading faster than urban redevelopment can clear them out. Mayor’s Special Committee on Housing in New York. “The seemingly unstoppable spread of slums has confronted the great cities of the nation with chronic financial crises... The $2 billion public housing program has not made any appreciable dent in the number of slum dwellings... No amount of code enforcement until and unless the profit is taken out of slums by taxation. Architectural Forum Nov,1965

Origin of Site Value Rating:Australia

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.”

Red Tape Addiction

Written by Elma Lia Nascimento    Luís Carlos Ewald, a professor of Economics at PUC-Rio (Pontifícia Universidade Católica -- Pontifical Catholic University, wrote recently in Rio's daily Jornal do Brasil: "How many opportunities of generating new jobs were lost due to the discouragement of heroic entrepreneurs who gave up due to the unnecessary documents, negative or positive certificates, marriage and death certificates, medical and dental certificates, police clearance, vaccinations, pedigrees, CGCs (Cadastro Geral de Contribuintes -- Taxpayers' General Register), IPTUs (Imposto Predial e Territorial Urbano -- Urban Building and Land Tax), alvarás (licenses), permits, authorizations, collateral signatures, cadasters, criminal records, X-rays, insurance, paternity DNA, certified signatures, certificate of occupancy, proof of residence, IPVA (Imposto sobre Propriedade de Veículos Automotores -- Tax on Ownership of Automotive Vehicles), blood group, Rh factor, and so many more, all with certified photocopies." To start a sole ownership company, the individual faces a via Dolorosa of different places and assorted lines. He has to present a $35 Registro de Declaração de Firma (Business Declaration Record) obtained at the Junta Comercial (Board of Trade), a Fire Department Approval Certificate ($37), and a $208 Alvará de Localização (Localization License) issued by City Hall. For a business corporation, these documents must be accompanied by a certificate showing that the specific business name is not in use, as well as a Registro do Contrato Social (Certificate of Incorporation Registration). In 1995 alone, IOB, a publication of business tax information, published 3,800 pages related to changes made during the year in the rules for payment of taxes to the Union, the state, and the municipalities. This amounts to 15 changes per day! And while in the U.S. or Europe a person is able to start a business in as little as two days, in Brazil this process takes at least 40 days. Up to 96% of small businesses are not able to deal with the company's accounting without hiring an accountant. And business people spend 26% of their time dealing with official bureaucracy, according to a study conducted by CNI (Confederação Nacional da Indústria -- National Confederation of the Industry). With globalization, the Brazilian bureaucracy has become a turnoff for foreign companies looking to invest in the country. A just-released World Bank's comparative study between Chile, Peru and Brazil shows that in Chile a private firm's worker spends 0.5% of his time dealing with governmental bureaucracy, in Peru 4%, and in Brazil 5%. http://www.brazzil.com/content/view/9242/0/