Parliament looks at fundamentals of Land Value Taxation

This week the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons began hearing evidence on the Fundamentals of Tax Policy. Members of the Mirrlees Review team of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, which recommended LVT in a report late last year, were among the first to be heard by MPs.

At least eight of the member organisations belonging to the Coalition for Economic Justice, of which PLRG is a member, have submitted written evidence to the House of Commons Treasury Committee, which launched an Inquiry into tax in November, prompted by Mirrlees. PLRG itself did not submit evidence, since it has yet to become involved in original research on the matter. However many of our members will be interested to read the submissions. The closing date was Friday 14th January 2011.

Under House of Commons Rules on such Inquiries, the evidence (as submitted) cannot be published other than by Parliament itself, unless special permission is given. However drafts of some of the Memoranda submitted by CEJ members have been circulated and/or placed on their websites.

One organisation - the Lib Dems' ALTER (Action on Land-value Taxation & Economic Reform) has already received permission to let its individual members see their submission (here in draft), which was prepared by economics lecturer Brian Hodgkinson (author of The New Model of the Economy). Extracts of all eight submissions are soon to be made available on each organisation's websites. In addition to ALTER, these are: Labour Land Campaign; Land Value Taxation Campaign; Henry George Foundation; School of Economic Science; Transforming Communities; Systemic Fiscal Reform Group; and CEJ itself.

Most of the authors of the CEJ's submissions hope to be called to give oral evidence to the Committee in coming weeks.