Tax the land

Bruce Crichton (Letters, 16 April) is correct in pointing out that income tax or other direct imposts on productive labour eventually cost jobs. Can anyone point out an example of a situation where increasing income tax leads to more work or greater production? The only way out of a recession is to create more economic activity and preferably in a manner sympathetic to social justice.

The pathway to achieving this is very simple, but not, of course, easy, and lies in switching the raising of public revenue away from taxing what we do and make and over to paying our due for what we hold and take. The manifestation of this process would be the collection of land rental values (often wrongly called land value taxation) based on the unimproved value of land, but not on the onsite buildings or economic activity.

With the current theft of labour (income tax) becoming extinct (along with the tax-avoidance industry associated with it) we can, at a stroke, stimulate jobs, erase the problems of non-doms not paying their dues and absentee landlordism and, at the same time, raise large, predictable amounts of revenue for public services.

RON GREER

Armoury House

Blair Atholl, Perthshire