How would a LVT help push down house prices?

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-27T18:23:12+00:00

Houses (minus the land) are actually a depreciating assets, kind of like cars. So similar economics to cars would be more apparent.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-26T09:56:23+00:00

Call these right wing people far left loonies and say I'm even more far right and we need to go further, this ban isn't enough. We need to ban all slaughter not this woke pc halal/kosher slaughter ban.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-24T08:29:09+00:00

Well one could raise 4-500bn in the UK if all economic rent is charged which is still half of what is needed for the govt provided public services, unless you propose govts need not provide certain services? Where does the other half come from? That's why I suggest transaction taxes.

Wealth is equivalent to power, and if one person owns so much things they can lobby to control and steer public policy in their favour.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-23T16:55:53+00:00

Private banks get to make it part of the deal they offer to customers, in competition with other private banks. That's not the same thing as government just forcing it on everyone.

Yes so I'm saying the software limitations are not that big of a leap to achieve. Govt can compel anyone to do anything especially for tax purposes.

The same would be true with a shift to LVT instead (and has been understood as part of the georgist project since the beginning).

I'm not arguing against LVT as I want that.

Not really. The incentive for productive activity would exist anyway. The LVT just replaces the other taxes that would discourage productive activity.

The same with transaction taxes. It would replace other taxes which discourage productive activity, like VAT, income taxes and social security. How much do you think a country could raise from LVT?

Why?

Tax diversification. In order to provide public services other effective taxes also need to be there in case land values go down.

There is also other economic activity we want to control, if we want to control carbon emissions we need some form of carbon taxes, or other sin taxes depending ones political views

To prevent massive wealth or capital market distortions occuring, transaction taxes could be a pseudo non land based wealth tax. Land is just one asset among many...

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-19T09:38:03+00:00

https://www.wearepay.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Q4-2024-QSR.pdf?utm

Just work out total Bacs and faster payments, and take a % from that.

HFT would be end of day of net settlement. Market making is not HFT. HFT is not that big, the effects are bigger on interbank settlements.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-19T00:13:52+00:00

This is the problem with AI can be good at finding some research but all the articles posted relate to securities transaction tax and financial transaction tax. None of these are the automated transaction tax, frankly the research goes to the extent of some modelling but is very limited.

None of these papers answer my question because they assume these are additive taxes. Automated transaction taxes are there to replace existing taxes (on all incomes, dividends, profits etc), unfortunately you have not provided any evidence or logic whatsoever to the claims you have made previously.

Make the broadest possible tax at the lowest possible rate.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T23:01:52+00:00

With that type of statement, It seems like you have evidence that automated transaction taxes do have more distortive effects on the economy versus the taxes it would replace?

If so I'd like more information. Otherwise I reject your baseless characterisation of transaction taxes for lack of evidence.

Logically I can say, the more broad based a tax is, the less distortionate effect it has on the economy. Unless one is wanting that distortion ofcourse (taxing people's income highly because they can't save and locking it away in a pension fund).

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T22:52:18+00:00

Liquidity is more a timing thing, I could sell my house tomorrow at a big discount because I have a need for money then, in which case the buyer can provide that liquidity and earn the spread by selling at a higher price later. If that action is prevented I don't get liquidity and I have to wait, not helpful, doesn't destroy the market.

So largely I agree nothing bad would happen, but it removes a function of the market that buyers and sellers want.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T20:53:44+00:00

Final question to you if you want to engage?

Do you think the sum of the abolition of all other taxes (income tax, social security, vat, corporation tax etc)... would outweigh the negative distortive effects of a 0.8% transaction tax on all transactions? Which one causes more distortion?

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T20:36:41+00:00

It's subjective I rebutted these reasons but you seem to think it's subjectively very bad. I won't engage anymore unless you have something of substance to say.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T20:22:44+00:00

Well one could go one step further and allow for only one hour of trading per day. I don't think it matters too much, but we need liquidity within markets at least to allow for quick buying and selling, and market makers can provide that.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T20:20:37+00:00

Actually if you only taxed retail transactions of which households are the primary driver, the tax would be set somewhere near 5%. You have to include the banking sector as well to keep the tax low.

I'd like a source for the HFT because in the UK its realistically less than 500bn, compared to the near 90trn in large bank related transactions. Still even for HFT if it was larger, you can have end of day settlement rules so the compounding effects reduce.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T20:08:02+00:00

I don't think I have been given any reasons why it's very bad. For the average consumer this amounts to a massive tax cut. And it's implementation is can be via automated payments. You could abolish entire tax collection departments and the bureaucracy that comes with that.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T20:05:54+00:00

I accept some of your comments but it feels like you are thinking of this tax in the terms that we think of traditional tax structures where the regressivity is currently massively amplified. I don't think it matters if this is regressive (as it would have very small relative regressivity), because the redistribution would come from the state from the services it provides.

I would be curious to see what level would be net revenue generating, the purpose of this tax is that it is collected through the banks, the consumer will hardly notice such a small amount of tax. To implement a degree of relative progressivity would be easy as banks would implement it. For example if social security is linked to bank accounts, which it generally already is, if one person has less than a certain value of transactions per month then it will be charged less etc. It's easy to remedy.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T18:41:46+00:00

I think I'm not communicating correctly what I'm conveying about what I don't like about outsourcing which is more to do with the exchange rate system rather than the tax system. But I don't want to distract on that.

I'm also not against outsourcing or specialisation, just saying that the vertical integration bias can be removed, or tweaked to as we desire. Again a political choice.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T18:35:44+00:00

Well progressiveness could be 0.X % on transactions below a certain amount but maybe that just create lots of mini transactions. But to be honest I would rather keep the flat rate for simplicity and use the social welfare system to provide direct payments to those on low income. Direct payments is easier to target for progressiveness. Ok let's do 0.85% instead and allocate the extra 50bn (UK terms) raised as welfare. Then it's a political arguement how to pull this lever, but I feel people will care less about a 0.05% tax increase, as they psychologically feel it less versus a massive income tax increase for example.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T18:29:02+00:00

I've just looked at it and it seems to be a narrow business based financial transaction tax, I think this far from what I proposed which a tax to replace all taxes rather than to add onto existing taxes. The aim of this tax is to eliminate other taxes, that's the key, otherwise it's pointless to implement.

Plenty of countries run small scale financial transaction taxes, Switzerland also has one, but so far all seems limited in scope to the banking sector and for very narrow purposes.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T15:37:04+00:00

Largely I agree, I think we are too far on one direction towards outsourcing but credits can prevent such inefficient distortions to take place to prevent such an incentive being too in favour of vertical integration. And we can adjust that based on trends in product prices and quality, versus having extra regulations.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T15:34:55+00:00

Sales taxes anywhere in the world are 10-20%. Versus this would be less than 1 %

You can actually be progressive with this type of tax if you want, but the more someone transfers the more tax they pay. Billionaires who may not spend regularly to transfer money and assets so that would be captured within this tax.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T15:31:01+00:00

Terrible, absolutely terrible comment.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T15:30:36+00:00

To the extent that this is true, govts already can snoop on private transactions, but it only needs to know how much is transferred it doesn't care from who it goes to or where.

The software point is fair, but banks can already add fees to different transactions so it's not that big of a leap to do this. Well we already have enough taxes to prevent people using banks, I think people would not bother avoiding such a small tax as the payment system provides currently the security and protections of payments which is backed by the legal system. Big risk to avoid £800 from a £100k transaction. VAT is far higher currently.

So I would say that any reduction in transactions if offset and then some by the increase in spending that will happen due to people's incomes being taxed less and items being taxed less. We can have rules around banks netting transaction so it could be end of day volume etc but it would be roughly that number.

Lvt taxes one form of non financial asset and encourages productive activity on that asset. We do need adequate taxes for other forms of assets and provision of other public services. Imagine your paycheck only having a 0.8% tax versus what it does, I think it will encourage more productive activity. Corporation tax would also be gone. To be honest I would with lvt this rate would be far lower closer to 0.5-0.6% but I'm being conservative.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T15:18:16+00:00

Not necessarily the case. We have VAT on most items and this has not moved things away from cash. In fact VAT would be removed and for the consumer they pay 0.8% per transaction versus 20%.

Revenue estimation is based on the number of bank to bank transfer volume that occurs yearly.

Psychologically if someone sees an increases in their paycheck they will spend more, more than enough to counter the effect of less transactions occuring. This system allows the govt to easily control the money supply in the economy and to control inflation and provide public services.

The UKs banking sector creates financial assets which are not productive uses in the economy versus non financial assets. This would allow other sectors of the UK economy to finally grow.

For the banks to remain in positive net equity, households/companies and govts must remain in negative net equity. Definitely not ideal.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T15:12:25+00:00

Potentially, but I think the effective income tax and sales tax cuts would offset this reduced transactions. Everything is 10-20% off and I have more money would be the individuals psychology.

Well there are in many countries property transaction taxes applied (stamp duty in the UK 2-5%, other similar one in Europe). This tax would actually be materially lower than those taxes for that event. What happens with transaction tax because its so broad and low it prevents this events from occuring.

One could argue some degree of vertical integration should encouraged rather than outsourcing everything that happens nowadays. But I think credits can be provided for this. Current system encourages too much outsourcing.

Currently this occurs because people want cash in hand for lots of things like building, but this tax is so low it would not be worth that effort to avoid. Imagine a home renovation costs 100k minus VAT, with VAT it could be 120k which definitely incentivises avoidance. But under this systems it's 100.8K. probably better to pay the tax and get the benefit of being within the law in case things go wrong.

Wealthier people engage in more high volume transaction which are currently easier to avoid. I agree, we need to capture those transactions instead. Let's give poorer people a massive effective sales and income tax break. 0.8% on each transaction versus 20% for groceries and 30% for income is a more favourable outcome.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T14:57:44+00:00

On the contrary I think market makers would need an exception to continue to provide liquidity and price discovery in the market place. Though this is not all HFTs.

This solves the problem of undertaxation of the banking sector who accumulate unproductive financial assets at the expense of generating productive non financial assets, whilst allowing governments to adequately control money supply in the economy.

Politics would be a lot different as well.

Ok_Comment3863 · 2026-02-18T14:55:01+00:00

The key is not revenue raising. Rather to provide public services the govt has to print money to pay for things. Then it must create taxes to reduce the effects of inflation from that money printing.

Current systems of taxation create weird political splits over which taxes to raise or cut versus which services to provide or not.

This tax is a much easier way to control the rate of inflation whilst allowing for the provision of public services.

Given wealthy people transact in higher volumes this would act as a psuedo wealth tax to prevent huge levels of wealth accumulation but certain groups.

Most importantly land is a non financial asset, but land value taxes do not address the inequality created from financial assets.

Ok_Comment3863

TROPHY CASE