Alistair Gunn wrote:
Doctor Drivel twisted the electrons to say:
Such confusion and misinformation. Land Valuation Tax is on the
value of the land only and payable only by the landlord. It cannot
be passed onto the tenant in the rent, as the landlord charges the
highest the market will bare right now. LVT gets land prices down
and prevents land speculation and hoarding.

Of course LVT would get passed onto the tenant, landlords not being
generally known for their massive charitable impulses!

http://www.landvaluetax.org/frequent...passed-on.html
Why LVT cannot be passed on.

"The answer to this question is very simple if you imagine yourself in the
situation of a landlord.

As a landlord, I already charge as much as I can obtain for my property. I
may decide to charge a bit below top rate so as to avoid it being empty, or
I may stick out for the last penny which means I must accept that the
property will be empty for 10% of the time. Either way, I am getting as much
is I possibly can.

Once LVT is introduced, then I am liable to pay the tax whether the property
is occupied or not. So I have a stronger incentive to set the price
competitively so as to ensure that it is vacant for as short a time as
possible."

http://www.earthrights.net/docs/landlord.html

Why a landlord can not just pass on the cost of LVT to the renter?

If, as claimed by vested interests, the land value tax can be passed on, why
do not these representatives of special privilege pass the measure and allow
their friends to pass it on? The reason is they know that the land values
tax cannot be transferred. - EJ Craigie, former South Australian politician,
circa 1958.

A. THE CLASSICISTS:

1 Though the landlord is in all cases the real contributor, the tax is
commonly advanced by the tenants, to whom the landlord is obliged to allow
it in payment of the rent. - Adam Smith "Wealth of Nations" Book 5, Ch 2

2 A tax on rent falls wholly on the landlord. There are no means by which he
can shift the burden upon anyone else... A tax on rent, therefore, has no
effect other than the obvious one. It merely takes so much from the landlord
and transfers it to the State. - John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) "Principles of
Political Economy" Book 5, Ch 3, Sect 2

3 The power of transferring a tax from the person who actually pays it to
some other person varies with the object taxed. A tax on rents cannot be
transferred. A tax on commodities is always transferred to the consumer. -
Professor James E Thorold Rogers "Political Economy" 2nd ed Ch 21, p 285

4 A tax levied in proportion to the rent of land, and varying with every
variation of rents... will fall wholly on the landlords. - Walker's
"Political Economy", p 413

5 The incidence of the ground tax, in other words, is on the landlord. He
has no means of shifting it; for, if the tax were to be suddenly abolished,
he would nevertheless be able to extort the same rent, since the ground rent
is fixed solely by the demand of the occupiers. The tax simply diminishes
his profits. - ERA Seligman "Incidence of Taxation" pp 244-245

6 A tax on rent would affect rent only: it would fall only on landlords and
could not be shifted. The landlord could not raise the rent, because he
would have unaltered the difference between the produce obtained from the
least productive land in cultivation and that obtained from land of every
other quality. - David Ricardo "Principles of Political Economy and
Taxation" Ch 10, Sect 62

7 The way taxes raise prices is by increasing the cost of production and
checking supply. But land is not a thing of human production, and taxes upon
rent cannot check supply. Therefore, though a tax upon rent compels owners
to pay more, it gives them no power to obtain more for the use of their
land, as it in no way tends to reduce the supply of land. On the contrary,
by compelling those who hold land for speculation to sell or let for what
they can get, a tax on land values tends to increase the competition between
owners, and thus to reduce the price of land. - Henry George P&P Book 8, Ch
3

B. MODERN ECONOMISTS:

1 Pure land rent is in the nature of a "surplus" which can be taxed without
affecting production incentives. - Paul A Samuelson, Hancock & Wallace,
"Economics - An Introductory Analysis" (Australian Edition) Ch 28 p 595

2 .... the complete inelasticity of the supply of land means that a tax on
land rent has no effect on price or output and therefore does not alter
resource allocation...This outcome is in contrast to property taxes on
buildings.. Jackson & McConnell, "Economics" (2nd Aust Ed pp 540/541)

3 The (land) tax cannot be passed on to consumers... The failure of the
single tax idea does not change the fact that a large increment of value
does accrue to the owners of land, particularly in or near urban areas, due
to the growth of the economy, without the landlord having to contribute any
productive factor services in order to earn it. - Richard G Lipsey, "An
Introduction to Positive Economics" (3rd ed.)

4 Aside from its compelling appeal to the public's sense of justice, a
single tax on land has another advantage over most other forms of taxation -
it is neutral in its effects on production incentives and resource
allocation. - Waud, Hocking, Maxwell & Bonnici, "Economics" (Australian
Edition)