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Privacy
Fred E. Foldvary — The Ultimate Tax Reform: Public
Revenue from Land Rent
Without audits, bank account seizures, and
fear-inspiring letters from the IRS requesting
information or additional payments or imposing interest
and penalties, the opportunity for tyranny would greatly
diminish, if not entirely disappear. Evasion being
impossible, there would be no need or excuse for any
inquisitive state investigators of fraud. Land value
taxation also involves less invasion of privacy than
taxing the whole property, since land value assessors do
not need to enter the property to assess it. They
don’t assess the new pipes, the expanded wiring,
the renovated kitchen, or the new cottage in the back.
... read the whole
document
Charles T. Root — Not a Single Tax! (1925)
Think of a tax which both assesses itself and collects
itself, which burdens no one, which is paid voluntarily,
and only by those who do so for their own profit or other
advantage. Compare this with our present system of taxes,
which everyone despises, which can be collected in full
only from the very scrupulous and from the helpless, from
trust funds of widows and orphans, or from estates which
lie naked before the tax gatherer on the records of
court; a system which drives men of property from state
to state and town to town in flight from the assessor,
and well-nigh forces many worthy citizens to practices of
evasion which must make it hard for them to look into
their own mirrors during the season for "Correction of
Assessments;" there can be but one verdict upon such
comparison. ... read the
whole article
Karl Williams: Social Justice In Australia:
INTRODUCTORY KIT
Firstly, in a Geonomic society, the experience of
real liberty would pervade everything. For citizens would
not be beholden to the government to supply it all sorts
of financial and personal information demanded by the tax
system. Instead of having to abide by a multitude of tax
requirements, the land you occupy would simply be
assessed by professional assessors. This would only occur
once a year, and the assessors would not even need to
step onto your property because it would only be your
land and not the improvements that would be
assessed.
BEGONE!
Gone are the armies of tax accountants, tax
lawyers and tax department bureaucrats. Gone are the
inefficiencies of speculation, the black economy and its
attendant criminal elements. Gone is the pool of
unemployed and the cost of supporting it (much more on
this later). Gone are many of the social problems arising
from unemployment, poverty, despair arising from
hopelessness, and resentment resulting from great
inequities of wealth. And because of LVT and other
eco-taxes apply to all of the Global Commons, we'll live
on a much healthier planet - and so will our
children.
Instead, in steps an inconceivable prosperity
resulting from a dynamic economy that encourages
productivity, discourages speculation, is not hampered by
high welfare needs, abolishes privilege, and doesn't
undersell our natural environment. It is estimated that a
typical household will have a true disposable income
(after all taxes) often double that of the current
system, and that the average business will earn trading
profits after tax/rent considerably greater (refer to the
section "What's in it for me?"). Read the
entire article
Karl Williams: Social
Justice In Australia: INTERMEDIATE KIT
MONITOR THE PLANET, NOT THE
PEOPLE!
Remember too that LVT eliminates the government
surveillance over people, their activities and their
assets. What LVT and other conventional eco-taxes does do
is to monitor Our One Earth as any responsible form of
stewardship should, ensuring our scarce natural resources
are not polluted, wasted, undersold or privately
misappropriated.
The bottom line of our present economic system is
that not everything which counts (our
Earth) can be counted (in $ terms), and not everything
that can be counted ("progress") counts.
Presently, it's the market which determines the "worth"
of, say, our water resources, our genetic integrity or
the last remaining habitat of an endangered species. The
only moderating factor to this is the blunt instrument of
occasional government intervention, when public outcry
forces it to save what's left of our (and future
generations') Global Commons.
But there is a means of determining the worth of
all of these intangible benefits - patches of the Global
Commons which confer aesthetic, recreational,
life-enhancing, spiritual, climate-preserving,
biodiversity-saving benefits.
...
We all-too-meekly accept being legally robbed of
the fruits of labour and capital, because we have been
stooged into believing that there is no other way to pay
for responsible government expenditure. Having
established that beachhead, our governments then steadily
make further inroads into earned income as well as into
other human rights. After having been dispossessed of our
share of the Global Commons, it would seem pretty
inconsequential to complain about taxation eroding
privacy, but it's worth looking into.
WADING THROUGH THE
MIRE
But just how trifling is the fact that a mass of
laws, too many and complex for anyone to fully get a
handle on, forces us to account for much of our
"personal" activities? Our private lives are open to
scrutiny following all sorts of disclosure. "But we have
to pay our taxes," Peabody bleats as he obediently
discloses every detail the tax system demands of his
earnings, assets and investments. "We don't need to
understand all this tax legislation," the dutiful drone
on, "as we can simply employ accountants and sometimes
tax lawyers to do it for us." "It's part of our duty as
responsible citizens," Elroy explains as he files away
his complete audit trails of financial transactions &
statements required for tax purposes.
And we have to obey the law, don't we? The Tax
Commissioner has powers of investigation in some
circumstances greater than the police - in fact he is the
law, with masses of legislation to support him and his
sleuths. But as he's unlikely to kick in our bedroom door
in the middle of the night, his other low-key invasions
of privacy don't get much of a mention in the
media.
And now GST dumps on us the onus and cost of
collecting it. And the massive compliance costs of
Business Activity Statements alone now display
all-too-clearly the time and resources spent by taxpayers
that would otherwise go into production.
BIG BENEFACTOR, NOT BIG
BROTHER
While humans are being closely
monitored, natural resources are not - the inverse of
Geonomics. Only recently have we been getting some
laws prohibiting or restricting certain types of
pollution, but land and other natural resources are still
being treated as mere commodities liable to being owned
outright and treated as truly private private property.
But natural resources don't behave as ordinary
commodities, because many of them are scarce and some are
necessary for human existence. At least we can be
thankful that sunlight is abundant and renewable, for if
it could be limited then someone would try to bottle it
up and make a fortune on it.
Geonomics does not intrude into people's lives.
Unlike the current assessors of misguided property tax,
LVT assessors would never need to inspect and assess
buildings and improvements, and rarely if ever would they
need to set foot on the land itself, hence assuring
complete privacy for most people. But Geonomics would
monitor the direct usage of natural resources in order to
determine the full and fair LVT and resource rentals.
Usage of this sort obviously should not be kept private.
...
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