Lower Taxes to the Ground

"We hold, as we always have held, that, so far as practicable, local and national taxes which are necessary for public purposes should fall on the publicly-created value rather than on that which is the product of individual enterprise and industry. That does not involve a new or additional burden on taxation, but it would produce these two consequences - first of all, that we should cease to be imposing a burden upon successful enterprise and industry; and next, that the land would come more readily and cheaply into the best use for which it is fitted. These two things would be two potent promoters of industry and progress."

Joseph M. Barr, Former Mayor of Pittsburgh, PA:

“I believe the Graded Tax plan, which was adopted here in 1913 by an act of the state legislature, has done a great deal to encourage the improvement of real estate in general, and especially the building of homes and apartments. And I think it has been particularly fair and beneficial to homeowners.”

“It is generally felt that most of the fine structures erected through private enterprise and investment as part of the renewal program, are benefited by the lower tax rate on buildings, ...”

“Many people now believe the Graded Tax law should be extended. ...It was first sponsored here by a Republican Mayor, William Magee in 1913, and has since been supported by both Republican and Democratic mayors.”

“The law is generally accepted in the community and there is no significant support for its repeal or modification. In short, the Graded Tax plan has worked well in Pittsburgh, and we believe it would prove equally beneficial if tested in other areas.”

Ambrose Bierce:

“LAND: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure. Carried to its logical conclusion, it means that some have the right to prevent others from living; for the right to own implies the right exclusively to occupy, and in fact laws of trespass are enacted wherever property in land is recognised. It follows that if the whole area of terra firma is owned by A, B and C, there will be no place for D, E, F and G to be born, or, born as trespassers, to exist.”

William Blackstone:

“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.”

Steven C. Bourassa, Professor of Economics:

“My study of housing development in Pittsburgh demonstrated that small decreases in the tax rate on buildings resulted in substantial increases in the amount of new housing constructed in the city. In contrast, increases in the tax rate on land had no undesirable effects.”

“The evidence from Pittsburgh strongly supports the idea that cities concerned with economic development should shift their real estate taxes from buildings to land [in order to] maintain revenues while encouraging development.”

“Given the results of this study, land value taxation seems to be a desirable strategy for central cities to employ in seeking to encourage development and attract households. Because households are relatively mobile within metropolitan areas, land value taxation may permit central cities to attract households that would otherwise locate in nearly suburban jurisdictions.”

James Buchanon:

“The landowner who withdraws land from productive use to a purely private use should be required to pay higher, not lower taxes. “

William F. Buckley, Jr.:

“What I'm talking about Mr. Lamb is Henry George who said there is infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor, but none to increase land, and since wealth is a function of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, the tax on the parking lot should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building, because you shouldn't encourage land speculation. Anyway I've run into tons of situations were I think the Single-Tax theory would be applicable. We should remember also this about Henry George, he was sort of co-opted by the socialists in the 20s and the 30s, but he was not one at all. Alfred J. Nock's book on him makes that plain. Plus, also, he believes in only that tax. He believes in zero income tax.”

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Former British Prime Minister:

"Let the value of the land be assessed independently of the buildings upon it, and upon such valuation let contribution be made to those public services which create the value. This is not to disturb the balance of equity, but to redress it. …There is no unfairness in it. The unfairness is in the present state of things. Why should one man reap what another man sows? We would give to the landowner all that is his, but we would prevent him taking something which belongs to other people."

Gary Carlson, Community Development Director, Newton, IA:

“Specific changes in the state's property tax laws to allow local governments to set separate higher tax rates on land and lower tax rates on improvements could encourage economic development.”

Andrew Carnegie:

“The most comfortable, but also the most unproductive, way for a capitalist to increase his fortune is to put all his monies in sites and await that point in time when a society, hungering for land, has to pay his price.”

Wen-Hui Cheng, Professor of Public Finance, National Chengchi University, Taiwan:

“Raising the effective rates of the Land Value Tax not only benefits local finance, but also improves the equity and efficiency of the whole property taxation system. “

Winston Churchill:

“I have made speeches by the yard on the subject of land value taxation, and you know what a supporter I am of that policy.”

“It is quite true that the land monopoly is not the only monopoly which exists, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies -- it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all forms of monopoly.”

“Nothing is more amusing than to watch the efforts of our monopolist opponents to prove that other forms of property and increment are exactly the same, and are similar in all respects to the unearned increment in land.”

Colin Clark, Professor of Economics:

“What gives urban land its value, apart form the few cents per square foot which the developer has to spend on roads, water and sewerage connection, is its proximity to opportunities for employment, shopping, education, etc. In other words, the seller of urban land is mainly selling the fruits of other people's labour. The requirements of social justice would therefore indicate that heavy taxes should be imposed on land.”

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

Alan Cranston, Former Senator:

“Higher taxes on land and lower taxes on improvements have already been tested successfully.”

Lauchlin Currie, Economist:

“It is a striking example of our economic illiteracy that we have more or less quietly acquiesced in the private appropriation of socially created gains, letting fortunate owners and their heirs levy tribute or claim a share of the national income to which they have contributed nothing. [The case for capturing] all or a large portion of the pure monopoly gain of rising urban land has been impaired by failure to distinguish between land and capital in general, between land and building, and between the rise reflecting inflation and that traceable to pure scarcity.”

“The rise in land values ... that results from the growth in numbers and income of a community is a reflection of pure scarcity. It arises from the community and should belong to the community. It does not in any way arise form the work or saving of an individual owner and does not provide any incentive to work or save, since the supply of land is fixed.”

Herman Daly, Professor of Economics:

“Value added belongs to whoever added it. But the original value of that to which further value is added by labor and capital should belong to everyone. Scarcity rents to natural services, nature's value added, should be the focus of redistributive efforts. Rent is by definition a payment in excess of necessary supply price, and from the point of market efficiency is the least distorting source of public revenue.”

“Appeals to the generosity of those who have added much value by their labor and capital are more legitimate as private charity than as a foundation for fairness in public policy. Taxation of value added by labor and capital is certainly legitimate. But it is both more legitimate and less necessary after we have, as much as possible, captured natural resource rents for public revenue.”

“The above reasoning reflects the basic insight of Henry George, extending it from land to natural resources in general. Neoclassical economists have greatly obfuscated this simple insight by their refusal to recognize the productive contribution of nature in providing "that to which value is added". In their defense it could be argued that this was so because in the past economists considered nature to be non-scarce, but now they are beginning to reckon the scarcity of nature and enclose it in the market. Let us be glad of this, and encourage it further.”

“The modern form of the Georgist insight is to tax the resources and services of nature (those scarce things left out of both the production function and GDP accounts) -- and to use these funds for fighting poverty and for financing public goods. Or we could simply disburse to the general public the earnings from a trust fund created by these rents, as in the Alaska Permanent Fund, which is perhaps the best existing institutionalization of the Georgist principle. Taking away by taxation the value added by individuals from applying their own labor and capital creates resentment. Taxing away value that no one added, scarcity rents on nature¹s contribution, does not create resentment. In fact, failing to tax away the scarcity rents to nature and letting them accrue as unearned income to favored individuals has long been a primary source of resentment and social conflict.”

Clarence Darrow:

“Henry George was one of the real prophets of the world; one of the seers of the world. ...His was a wonderful mind; he saw a question from every side. ...When we learn that the value or land belongs to all of us, then we will be free men -- no need to legislate to keep men and women from working themselves to death; no need to legislate against the white slave traffic. ...The "single tax" is so simple, so fundamental and so easy to carry into effect that I have no doubt that it will be about the last land reform the world will ever get. People in this world are not often logical.”

H. J. Davenport, Professor of Economics:

“It is obvious that the bare land with its contents and the waters that flow through and about it constitute the nature-provided environment of human beings and are rightly the subject of their equal claims. Also that the value-for-use of these natural resources is conditioned on population. It follows population as its shadow. It appears with the people and disappears when they go. This value, therefore, should, by the best of titles, be retained by the community as its most excellent source of public revenue. The more the community draws upon this vast, community-conditioned fund the less will be the forced contributions from labour and capital. this means that the greater and better distributed will be the purchasing power of the people...”

Alan Day, Professor of Economics:

:It is arguable that the whole of the rent of land, or alternatively, of the capitalized value of rents, could be taxed away and yet the community would not suffer. In this respect land is different from the other factors of production.”

Alfred Deakin, Former Australian Prime Minister:

“The whole of the people have the right to the ownership of land and the right to share in the value of land itself, though not to share in the fruits of land which properly belong to the individuals by whose labour they are produced.”

Paul Douglas, Former Senator:

“We ask only that the men and women who make up society should be allowed to share in the increases in value which their presence and productivity have created. Unless there is such a public awareness and commitment, we shall repeat the history of the past and permit those who sit tight and hold on to a scarce factor of production to reap a large part of the product created by others. We are becoming properly aware of the need for land reform in the countrysides of Asia and Latin America. There is an even greater need for land reform in the cities and suburbs all over the world -- our own country included.”

Patrick Edward Dove, Author:

“How comes it that, notwithstanding man's vast achievements, his wonderful efforts of mechanical ingenuity, and the amazing productions of his skill, ... a large portion of the population is reduce to pauperism? ...To charge the poverty of man on God, is to blaspheme the Creator. ...He has given enough, abundance, more than sufficient; and if man has not enough, we must look to the mode in which God's gifts have been distributed.”

“We should make a fuller case for stronger land taxation as a means of reducing housing costs.”

Anthony Downs with Stanley Knighton, from the Washington Post, September 24,1995:

“This seemingly modest reform [a 2-rate building-to-land property tax shift] enabled Pittsburgh, Scranton, Harrisburg and a dozen smaller cities to keep housing costs down, and renew and revive blighted neighborhoods. These activities, in turn, unlocked job opportunities. If the District [of Columbia] went to a split-rate [2-rate] system, the experience in Pennsylvania cities indicates that: (a) homes and apartments on average would enjoy lower taxes; (b) owners of vacant lots and blighted buildings would pay substantially higher taxes; and (c) poor precincts would reap the proportionately greatest reductions.”

Alan Durning, Author:

“Taxes on income, payroll, property and retail sales discourage entrepreneurship, hiring, investment, savings and work ... they also encourage sprawl, depletion of natural resources and pollution of land, air and water. ...They could be replaced with taxes on land values and on actions that pollute, deplete or destroy habitat.”

Charles Eckert, Former U.S. Representative:

“By cutting taxes on labour, governments can remove one disincentive to join the job market; by cutting taxes on capital, one disincentive to save.

But by taxing the use of natural resources -- be they oil, or cadmium, or the dirt-absorbing capacity of the atmosphere -- governments can not only pay for lower taxes on labour and saving; they can also make markets work better, by ensuring that prices reflect the full costs of economic activity.”

John Erskine, Professor, Columbia University:

“I would say that the single tax theories of Henry George have always seemed to me unanswerable, and I believe that when we have tried other forms of taxation long enough to be convinced of their injustice -- and I don't know how many centuries that will take -- we shall be ready for his simple and convincing ideas.”

Edmund Faltermayer, Former Editor, Fortune Magazine:

“To discourage sprawl, many experts have long urged the property taxes be levied on land exclusively, or that communities at least tax the land component at a higher percentage of assessed value than buildings, as the city of Pittsburgh has done for several decades. To keep over-all revenues the same, communities would have to compensate for the total or partial untaxing of buildings by raising taxes on all land, whether built upon or not, and this would tend to produce two beneficial results:

On the one hand, owners of existing buildings would incur no increase in taxes, or less of an increase in taxes than at present, for renovating them.

On the other hand, the taxes on vacant land would rise, forcing speculators to build on it, or sell to others who would.

A good deal of research is needed on how American municipalities might switch entirely to a site-value form of taxation, or at least move partly in that direction. But it is clear that such a reform would tend to promote compact, intensively developed metropolitan areas that would be easy to service and get around in with more of the nearby countryside kept open for scenic and recreational purposes. Because we have failed to revamp the property tax, we have been promoting exactly the opposite effects.”

Joseph Fels:

“The fundamental evil, the great God-denying crime of society, is the iniquitous system under which men are permitted to put into their pockets the community-made values of land, while organized society confiscates for public purposes a part of the wealth created by individuals.”

Robert Fitch, Journalist:

“Best of all, a differential tax -- one that is higher on land than on buildings -- does away with the usual disadvantage of taxes. Almost invariably, if you tax something the capitalists will produce less of it and charge you more for it. But land is different. Most of it was produced once and for all by God. ...If you tax cigarettes the price will go up; if you tax the land you lower its price. It's no coincidence, then, that the one large city in the country with such a tax, Pittsburgh, has the lowest housing prices of any major city in America.”


Henry Ford:

"We ought to tax all idle land the way Henry George said -- tax it heavily, so that its owners would have to make it productive.”

Editors of Fortune Magazine, August 8, 1983:

“Higher land taxes, especially when accompanied by reduced taxes on structures, look like an idea businessmen ought to embrace and promote. The benefits in the form of more jobs and increasingly compact development are not only lasting, but flow to the whole community.”

Homer Fox, Professor:

“Land value taxation spurs development because a landlord can hardly sit and hold vacant land. The tax forces the rehabilitation of boarded-up buildings and the construction of new ones on vacant land, thus creating jobs. “

Matthew Fox, Theologian:

“A land tax would tax all land but not improvements on the land and in this way would encourage initiative and jobs, rather than discourage them. It would run the land speculator and the absentee landlord out of town.”

“A land tax would encourage farmers who actually farm instead of those who speculate and it would increase productivity, ingenuity and the creation of jobs. It would also lessen bureaucratic interference since basically it is simplifying the law code.”

Benjamin Franklin:

“Our legislators are all landowners, and they are not yet persuaded that all taxes are finally paid by the land ... therefore, we have been forced into the mode of indirect taxes. ...All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none may justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public.”

“Land should be taxed as much as possible, and improvements as little as possible.”

“If a tax were imposed equal to the annual use value of real property ex its improvement, so that it would now have no net earnings and hence no capital value of its own -- progress would be orderly and its fruits would be equitably shared.”

David Lloyd George, Former British Prime Minister:

“To prove a legal title to land one must trace it back to the man who stole it.”

“What man has produced belongs to the individual producer; what God has created belongs equally to all men ... therefore abolish all taxation save on the value of land.”

Haynes C. Goddard, Professor of Economics:

“There does exist a very appropriate financial mechanism for compensation to property owners. it is the land value increment tax, formerly known as a betterment tax. The idea is old, simple and widely considered fair. An increase in land value, as opposed to changes in the property value resulting from improvements erected on land, is basically an increase in site value. The land owners typically has done nothing to produce the incremental value. this increase usually results from population growth, economic growth and the infrastructural investments made by local governments, such as roads, water supply and sewerage. These increments are unearned by the property owner and could be taxed away without affecting resource allocation. That is, such taxation would not impair the potential for the land market to assign land to its 'highest and best' use."

Franklin D. Graham, Professor of Economics:

“The real unearned income is that which accrues to an individual without his having done anything which contributes to production. Of the several types of such income the most important is that which issues from the site value of land. the recipient of such an income does nothing to earn it; he merely sits tight while the growth of the community about the land to which he holds title brings him unmerited gain. This gain is at the expense of all true producers whether they be laborers, enterprisers or investors in industrial equipment. The taxation of this gain can do nothing to deprive the community of any service since the donee is rendering none. The land will be there for the use of society whether the return from it be taxed or free. Society creates the value and should secure it by taxation.”

Horace Greeley:

“Whenever the ownership of the soil is so engrossed by a small part of the community that the far larger part are compelled to pay whatever the few may see fit to exact for the privilege of occupying and cultivating the Earth, there is something very much like slavery.”

“A tax on the earnings of labor seems unjust by comparison (with a land tax) because it deprives the individual of what is rightfully his, the fruits of his own efforts. The same is true of a tax on the return to capital, to the extent that capital represents the unspent return of past labor and initiative.”

“Equally important -- and here orthodox economics agrees with George -- a natural resources rental charge is the rare tax that improves rather than distorts people's incentives. Tax labor, and people work less. Tax savings, and savings diminish. But tax land, and the supply remains the same, while the owner is forced to put it to more productive use.”

Peter Hall:

“When the site values are taxed ... the incentive is always to develop so as to realise the gains that are being taxed. Indeed this is one of the most important points which have consistently been made by the advocates of site-value rating.”

James Heilbrun, Professor of Economics:

“Site value -- the value of unimproved land -- has long been regarded [by economists] as a particularly fit object for taxation.”

Arthur Henderson:

"Under our present system improvements are penalized. If a shopkeeper extends his premises, or a farmer increases the value of his farm by erecting improved buildings or draining the land, the rates are immediately increased. That is a tax on private enterprise with which I do not agree. Private enterprise of a character not subversive of the public good I would encourage. It little becomes the wealthy landlords who oppose the shifting of the burden of the rates from houses, factories, shops, and machinery on to the value of the land, to criticise the speech I made at Newport. Why if I recently attached my name to a Bill for the taking of rates off machinery. Is that an attack on private enterprise? "

“As a first step, cities should abolish all business taxes that inhibit the location of startup firms or discourage investment in productivity-enhancing equipment or practices... Cities should also replace the business property tax with a tax on the market value of land, coupling the land tax with a broader use of business improvement districts or tax increment finance districts to pay for major infrastructure investments. Land taxes ... have several advantages over property taxes in keeping a city's economy competitive. They discourage speculative land banking. They encourage businesses to place as much capital on property as is economically justifiable because non-land forms of real property are not taxes. ...

Local personal taxes commonly take three forms: sales taxes, wage or income taxes, and property taxes, the latter being the most common. A residential property tax has two components -- a land tax and a sax on the value of the structure. The land component of the residential property tax should be assessed on an equal basis with the business land tax, again providing incentives to develop in neighborhoods with low land values, as well as preventing speculative land banking.”

Tseng Hsiao, Economist:

“The principle of equitable distribution of land rights requires no taxation on labour and capital. Furthermore, site rent has to be taxed for public revenue because land has monopoly power. There is a difference between ordinary products and land. The latter is a gift of nature, which is limited and cannot be increased by human beings; its revenue has to be shared among all citizens in society.”

Albert Hydeman, Jr., Former Secretary, Pennsylvania Department of Community Affairs:

“Is there a sensible alternative to the property tax? Such an alternative would have to do the following things: Realign the tax burden from those least able to pay to those most able to pay, simplify and reduce the cost of community growth and development.

I think there is such an alternative. It's known as the land value tax. We are now taxing improvements -- buildings -- at the same rate we tax land. I think that's a mistake.

We're discouraging people from fixing up their properties. There should be a lower property tax on improvements -- or none at all.”

Thomas Jefferson:

“The earth is given as a common stock for men to labor and to live on. ... Wherever in any country there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.”

Kenneth Jupp, British High Court Judge:

“People should pay to society the value of what they receive from society, which is reflected in the value of the land they occupy. To allow that value to be bought and sold between private individuals is morally wrong. Land is, by natural law, the common property of the community.”

Alfred E. Kahn, Professor of Economics:

“I have never seen a convincing refutation of the Henry George proposition that taxing the rental value of land would actually increase the supply offered in the market, whereas taxing capital must to some extent interfere with the growth of productivity.”

Carl Kaysen, Professor of Economics:

“It is important that the rent of land be retained as a source of government revenue.

It provides revenue with which governments can pay for socially valuable activities without discouraging capital formation or work effort, or interfering in other ways with the efficient allocation of resources.”

Jack Kemp:

“Property taxes could profitably be revised to fall more heavily on land rather than, as at present, penalizing property improvements.”

Platform from the Keystone Party, Pennsylvania:

“We believe that the unduly high price of land in this county, causing high rents for both factory and home, is the greatest obstacle in the development of diversified industries in this district. These high prices are due largely to the speculation in land by which a few individuals appropriate to themselves the values resulting solely from the growth of the community.

In order to remedy this, we would greatly relieve the improvements on land from taxation, and to this end, we favor the reduction of assessments on such improvements at the rate of ten per cent a year for a period of five years, thereby reducing taxes on all improved real estate and somewhat increasing them on land held out of use. Such a policy would tend to reduce rents and to cause the improving of unused land to the great benefit of all the people.”

Michael E. Kinsley:

“As the late Henry George famously pointed out, wealth accruing in land operates like a tax on the productive facotrs in the economy, labor and capital. His solution was to lower the value of land as close as possible to zero by taxing away all of the return, or monopoly rent, and using the money to reduce (or, in his ideal, eliminate) taxes on the productive factors.”

“The single-tax that George proposed, and Tolstoy advocated, promised to remove the slavery. Under this plan, the economic rent would be nationalized. To do so, it is not necessary for the government to confiscate all the land and become the biggest landowner. All that is necessary is for government to tax the land so that its effective value is zero. Given the inelastic nature of land supply, it is possible to capture the whole rent value without affecting the price for the consumer.”

John Locke:

“It is in vain in a Country whose great Fund is Land, to hope to lay the publick charge of the Government on any thing else; there at last it will terminate. The Merchant (do what you can) will not bear it, the Labourer cannot, and therefore the Landholder must: And whether he were best do it, by laying it directly, where it will at last settle, or by letting it come to him by the sinking of his Rents, which when they are once fallen every one knows are not easily raised again, let him consider.”

Ramsay MacDonald, Former British Prime Minister:

"Our moral thoughts are usually cast ultimately into a theological form, and so the land reformer's case is generally opened by a statement like ' the land is God's common gift to all.' Cast in its severely economic form, however, the point is equally effective. Rent is a toll, not a payment for service. By it social values are transferred from social pools into private pockets, and it becomes the means of vast economic exploitation. . . .Rent is obviously a common resource. Differences of fertility and value of site must be equalised by rent, and it ought to go to common funds and be spent in the . common interest."

Peter J. McArdle, Former Pittsburgh City Councilman:

“The graded tax law has, in my opinion, been of decided benefit to the City, and to home owners in particular, by furnishing an added impetus to the development of vacant land located within the city limits.”

Campbell McConnell, Author:

“In the cities the present arrangement of relatively high property taxes on buildings and relatively low taxes on land tends to have perverse effects upon incentives. The relatively light taxes on land mean that landowners find the tax costs involved in holding vacant land ot be comparatively small, and so they are encouraged to withhold land form productive uses in order to speculate on increases in its value. Such action -- or inaction -- prevents growth of the property-tax base and contributes to the fiscal problems of the cities.”

Bernard B. McGinnis, Former Pennsylvania State Senator:

“As a young man active in Democratic politics and civic movements, I joined in a popular movement in 1913 which resulted in the Legislature adopting a Graded Tax for cities of the second class. It was a very simple measure endorsed by leading civic organizations and newspapers and sponsored politically by William A. Magee, then the Republican Mayor of Pittsburgh.

Since 1925 the cities of Pittsburgh and Scranton have taxed all dwellings and other buildings at just one-half of the rate levied on the land; the purpose being to encourage private improvements to real estate and to discourage the holding of valuable land for speculation.

This Graded Tax plan is generally accepted in Pittsburgh and has meant lower taxes for the great majority of home owners as well as for others whose properties are well improved. It has been strongly supported through the years by our Mayors and Councilmen, both Republican and Democratic. It is also helping Scranton to attract new industries and to lower taxes on homes.”

John Stuart Mill:

“When the sacredness of property is talked of, it should always be remembered that any such sacredness doe snot belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust. It is no hardship to anyone to be excluded from what others have produced: they were not bound to produce it for his use, and he loses nothing by not sharing in what otherwise would not have existed at all. But it is some hardship to be born into the world and to find all nature's gifts previously engrossed, and no place left for the new-comer.”

“Private investment for urban rebuilding can be attracted by modifying our tax system to encourage new construction and better land use. High land taxes and lower levies on improvements will compel owners to build or sell to those who will build. To a greater extent this emphasis on a change to land taxation is being accepted by planners, architects, public authorities and economists.

The point is not a new one. Those who improve their property are now penalized by higher taxes. Those who maintain slums are rewarded by a rise in land values.”

Dennis Murphy, Professor:

“If you improve your home by remodeling or building an addition, your taxes will rise, because we tax the improvements. If you own a rental property, and make improvements for your tenants, the taxes will increase, regardless of location. Tax only the land and tax it at a rate appropriate to its highest and best use.

The results would be dramatic.

Would the old Flame Tavern sit empty year after year? Or would ordinary economic incentives push the owners -- whom, by the way, I do not know -- to either make better use of the opportunities presented by these sites or sell to willing buyers who would?”

Edmund Muskie:

“We must ask whether it is fair that our federal tax laws -- which permit homeowners to deduct property tax payments from their income tax -- provide no real relief for apartment dwellers whose rent is increased by their landlords as a result of these same property taxes.

Still a more basic question is whether any property taxes should be levied against buildings and improvements (or) whether they should be levied completely or primarily on land value itself. [There is a good argument that it is] socially undesirable [to tax the land speculator less than the owner who improves his property, that urban decay can be blamed on property taxes which penalize properties, and that property taxes encourage land speculation rather than logical land development].”

Ralph Nader:

“Site-value property taxation may also spark greater development in cities by taxing land, not buildings. Unlike traditional taxation -- which rewards developers who put up cheap, tacky housing and strip malls -- site-value taxation gives developers the incentive to build gracious, durable buildings. Allowances for affordable housing, however, need to be part of site-value schemes.”

“The idea that land value taxation is unrealistic or would drive land prices into negative numbers is based on a static view of the economy, where no one responds to tax changes by substituting one factor for another. Once you accept that behavior will change in response to taxes, that static view no longer applies. Under these fairly conservative assumptions, tax reforms that use land taxes to eliminate entire classes of distortionary taxes are economically feasible in virtually all states.”

Dick Netzer, Dean NYU Graduate School of Political Science:

“My ideal system of local finance would comprise user charges and land value taxation.”

New York Times editorial, August 5, 1980:

“Too bad that Henry George, the author of Progress and Poverty, is not around to advise New York State's Comptroller, Edward Regan, on the economics of land and housing. Analyzing New York City's J-51 program to stimulate the rehabilitation of old buildings with tax concessions. Mr. Regan says it costs a fortune, or at least too much. Henry George would have told Mr. Regan that he has it exactly wrong. It's the tax on building improvements, not the tax abatement, that leads to poverty.”

John Norquist, Mayor of Milwaukee, WI:

“...it's been great for Pittsburgh. You almost can't find an empty lot in downtown Pittsburgh. They've done a lot of things wrong in Pittsburgh but one thing they did right was having this land value taxation so there's no incentive to have an empty lot.”

Jeremy Nowak:

"Cities should abolish all business taxes that inhibit the location of startup firms or discourage investment in productivity-enhancing equipment or practices, including all forms of gross receipts or turnover and net profits taxes. Cities should also replace the business property tax with a tax on the market value of land, coupling the land tax with the broader use of business improvement districts or tax increment finance districts to pay for major infrastructure investments. Land taxes, which may initially be extraordinarily low, even zero, in some especially distressed neighborhoods, have several advantages over property taxes in keeping a city's economy competitive. They discourage speculative land banking. They encourage businesses to place as much capital on property as is economically justifiable because non-land forms of real property are not taxed. They strongly encourage city government practices that preserve the value of land. And, finally, they are a powerful incentive to maintain properties.”

"Local personal taxes commonly take three forms: sales taxes, wage or income taxes, and property taxes, the latter being the most common. A residential property tax has two components-a land tax and a tax on the value of the structure. The land component of the residential property tax should be assessed on an equal basis with the business land tax, again providing incentives to develop in neighborhoods with low land values, as well as preventing speculative land banking."

Wallace Oates, Professor of Economics:

“What the Pittsburgh experience suggests to us is that the movement to a graded tax system can, in the right setting, provide some stimulus to local building activity. The primary role of the land tax in all this is to provide the additional source of revenues that allows a reduction in the rate on improvements.”

William Ogilvie:

“A tax on all augmentation of rents, even to the extent of one half of the increase, would be at once the most equitable, the most productive, the most easily collected, and the least liable to evasion of all possible taxes, and might with inconceivable advantage disencumber a great nation from all those injudicious imposts by which its commercial exchanges are retarded and restrained, and its domestic manufactures embarrassed.”

Thomas Paine:

“Men did not make the earth, and though he had a natural right to occupy it, he had no right to locate as his property in perpetuity any part of it; neither did the Creator of the earth open a land-office, from whence the first title-deeds should issue.”

“There is a better way to improve the competitiveness of a country's industries: reduce taxes that are passed on in prices and increase taxes that are not. The range of taxes that are built into prices is wider than is generally supposed. ...Taxes on land values, in contract, fall entirely on landowners and cannot be passed on in prices. Landowners cannot withdraw land from use in order to force users to pay the tax, because the withdrawn land generates no income to cover the tax. There is no surer way to make a country more competitive, thus protecting jobs in its industries, than to replace taxes on labour and capital with taxes on land values.”

Francois Quesnay:

“... the form of assessment which is the most simple, the most regular, the most profitable to the state, and the least burdensome to the tax-payers, is that which is made proportionate to and laid directly on the source of continually regenerated wealth (land).”

Donald Reeb, Professor of Political Science:

“The two-rate or graded tax not only reduces the negative effects from taxation on buildings, it promotes the development of new buildings and jobs.”

Theodore Roosevelt:

“The burden of taxation should be so shifted as to put the weight upon the unearned rise in the value of land itself, rather than improvements, the effect being to prevent the undue rise of rents.”

Bertrand Russell:

“The mere abolition of rent would not remove injustice, since it would confer a capricious advantage upon the occupiers of the best sites and the most fertile land. It is necessary that there should be rent, but it should be paid to the state or to some body which performs public services; or, if the total rental were more than is required for such purposes, it might be paid into a common fund and divided equally among the population.”

H. Earl Russell, U.S. Consul General, Union of South Africa:

“Most municipalities in the Transvaal tax land values only. City authorities and the people believe the land value tax is fairer than taxing both land and improvements. There is no tax on machinery or merchandise. This system has been in effect in Johannesburg since 1919. It did not cause any business disturbance when suddenly enacted and it has given general satisfaction... It undoubtedly has helped to replace old buildings with new ones in the more central locations.”

Paul Samuelson, economist:

“The difference between serfdom as in Russia, and landownership as in England, and particularly between the serf, and the tenant, occupier, mortgagor, etc., is more in form than in fact. Whether I own the peasant, or the land from which he must obtain his nourishment, the bird or its food, the fruit or the tree, is practically a matter of small importance.”

Ki R. Shim, Professor of Economics:

“Land value taxation has various advantages: the decrease in land speculation, the acceleration of urban development, the financial independence of local governments, redressing the fiscal diparity between a central city and its suburbs, prevention of urban sprawl and more effective use of land, etc. According to the Urban Land Institute of Washington, D.C., the land value tax is the golden key to urban renewal to the automatic regeneration of the city -- and not at public expense.”

Herbert Simon, Economist:

“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 tax ... It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget -- fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works.”

William E. Sloniker, Professor of Economics:

“The tax on buildings punishes all the people who improve their property by raising their taxes and rewards those who let their property deteriorate or sit vacant.”

“Taxing land alone would remove the disincentive to private development and private renewal of our cities and towns.”

Adam Smith:

“Both ground-rents and the ordinary rent of land are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Though a part of this revenue should be taken from him in order to defray the expenses of the state, no discouragement will thereby be given to any sort of industry. ...Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.”

“Ground rents seem in this respect a more proper subject of peculiar taxation than even the ordinary rent of land. ...Ground-rents, so far as they exceed the ordinary rent of land, are altogether owing to the good government of the sovereign. ...Nothing can be more reasonable than that a fund which owes its existence to the good government of the state should be taxed peculiarly, or should contribute something more than the greater part of other funds towards the support of that government.”

“The user 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.”

Ralph H. Todd:

“Obviously, heavy taxes on the location will not discourage or inhibit improvements; on the contrary, heavy taxes on locations should put effective pressure on the owners to put their sites to better use. A heavier tax on unimproved land would allow a city to expand in an orderly manner without relying on growth policies and huge subsidies, by simply allowing the profit motive and the free enterprise market system to function more effectively.”

Urban Land Institute:

“In the redevelopment situation the site value tax system acts to increase the supply of sites for redevelopment. ...The site value tax system thus operates to accelerate the transition of marginal properties to the status of economic redevelopment sites. ...Probably the most important effects of a site value tax system is the pressure on owners to sell their property for redevelopment if they cannot or will not redevelop it themselves.”

William Vickrey:

“Economists are almost unanimous in conceding that the land tax has no adverse side effects. ...Landowners ought to look at both sides of the coin. Applying a tax to land values also means removing other taxes. This would so improve the efficiency of a city that land values would go up more than the increase in taxes on land.

Landlords ought to be in favor of this proposal. If taxes on structures were removed, land values in New York City would go up much more.

There is also a strong equity argument in its favor. Consider the example of a tennis court. Even though people playing tennis have no use for electric, water and communication facilities, these services must be provided anyway. ...In effect we have to pay for utilities twice: once to the provider and once to the landowners who benefit by them.”

Francis A. Walker:

“A highway man points a pistol at my head, but offers to spare me if I shall give him $500, which I proceed to do with the greatest alacrity. In sparing my life he renders me the greatest possible service. ...Still the question will arise, "How came the highway man to be in a position to do me such a vital service, and, after all, what right has he to my $500?" In like manner, while the owner of land ... undoubtedly does me a great service [the use of the land] ... it will still be rational and pertinent for me to inquire, at least under my breath, what business he has with the land, more than I or any one else.”

James Whelen, Mayor of Atlantic City, NJ:

“Let us tax land, not improvements. While the notion that owners of vacant land would pay the same tax as owners of a fully developed office complex next door may seem strange at first, it would be a great anti-speculation tool that would encourage development.”

Sun Yat-sen:

“The teaching of Henry George will be the basis of our program of reform. ...The (land tax) as the only means of supporting the government is an infinitely just, reasonable and equitably distributed tax, and on it we will found our new system. The centuries of heavy and irregular taxation for the benefit of the Manchus have shown china the injustice of any other system of taxation.”