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Why Scotland should adopt the Land Value Tax

The Commission on Local Tax Reform was set up by the Scottish government in February 2015 to consider reform of local government taxation. In this article, submitted as written evidence to the Commission, Iain McLean makes the case for a land value tax (LVT).

By Iain McLean
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Thank you for issuing this call for written evidence. I structure my response around the options offered in your online questionnaire.

1.    Local tax should be based on…..

The value of the land you own. This is for reasons first set out by Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations (WN) Book V. I am pleased that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance referred to this in his speech introducing Land and Buildings Transactions Tax (LBTT).

A land value tax is the best of all taxes for three reasons.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0