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Scottish Bill launched to tax land values |
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Mark Ballard MSP is introducing a bill to radically reform Council Tax and Business Rates.
Here he tells Peter Gibb why his bill is the next important stage of Scottish land reform, and the one he hopes will bring the agenda home to urban Scotland.
THE BILL, sponsored by Ballard, the finance spokesperson for the Scottish Green Party, aims to reform the basis of local taxes by taxing the value of land itself. The bill's supporters believe it will make Scotland's system of local taxation fairer, more supportive of business, and more environmentally sustainable. It should also increase local government funding.
 Ballard recognises some public scepticism towards Green Party finance policy, but sees his party has an essential contribution to make to the public finance debate. “People ask me ’What do the Greens have to say on finance and local government?' But what we bring to the debate usually surprises folk. Our approach makes sense to the man and woman on the street.
The new bill seeks to shift the basis of tax assessment away from whole-property value, and onto land values only. The reformed system would disregard the value of the bricks and mortar ’improvements' in assessing tax. The bill's supporters argue that this change will encourage owners' to improve property and combat dereliction. They argue that the new system would collect the community-created locational value of a property. They see this value as a publicly-funded windfall, which is presently captured by individual private interests.
The bill's supporters argue that this reform alone will transform the landscape not only of local government finance, but the everyday economic life of every citizen in the country. As well as reforming the basis of the assessment, the bill will address several other issues:
- Completing the land register.
- Clarifying who is liable to pay the tax.
- Annual land value assessments using computer mapping techniques.
- The balance of funding between local and national government.
- Technical systems.
Ballard views his proposals as part of a worldwide change in the way we pay for public services. He sees his bill as one example of a major shift in economic thinking internationally. “There is a growing recognition, both in this parliament and across the world, that we need to work out what the actual impact of the taxes we use is. Taxing land values in place of conventional taxation is a way of raising money which has very positive social effects. Evidence suggests that land value taxation would seem to be a good way to solve many of the social and ecological ills in our society.
The bill is unlikely to succeed in becoming law in the short term. It's three-year passage through parliament may end with the falling of the bill. But to focus on such an outcome misses the point says Ballard. “If nothing else, this parliamentary process will deliver up to Scotland a detailed draft bill, developed with professional technical legal drafters, and that has been subjected to a degree of democratic scrutiny and testing. This could be a useful resource for the future. “It would not take a great change in outlook on the part of the Executive, for them to pick up the bill and run with.
Ballard believes that the next four years of this Scottish parliamentary session looks as though it's going to be important for those promoting radical economic reform. “I think it's going to be a very exciting time for people who want to see the end of our current unfair and ecologically and socially unsound system of local government. In the idea of taxing land values we have something which it's going to be very hard for people to argue against.
Ballard and his colleagues believe that by shifting towards such an approach, it will be possible to reconnect people with their democratic position in society. He believes the planning system is crucial in this. “The thing that I get the most letters about as an MSP, Ballard tells me, “is planning. People are desperately concerned about what's happening to their local environment. We must show clearly the link between those planning issues and the taxation of land values. We must recognise that there's an integration of local government finance and the most important local government decision - the granting of consent to owners of land to do certain things with that land.
Ballard sees strong connections between the decisions that a community makes about its environment and the economic success of that community. “And I think that's where we'll really start to make the links with people's wider concerns, confirms Ballard - “about what's happening to their cities, their towns, their villages and their countryside. That's one good reason why taxing land values is going to matter to people.
“I think it could be one of the most important reforms that we make in achieving what the Executive talks about in improving the quality of life for everybody in Scotland. That's what the issue of the land has always been about. This is where the argument must be taken, says Ballard. We must show people that “land values are people values.
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