Simon Brooke
Simon Brooke  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

It needs to be said that this speculative bubble and the unscrupulous and the fraudulent '#CarbonCredit' nonsense underlying it has been consciously and irresponsibly driven by #SNP#ScotGov policies.

This is not JUST bad lairds; it's also really poor governance, and if you're still voting SNP in the face of this, have a long hard look at yourself. This policy hits Scotland, it hits the people of rural Scotland, and it benefits only the kleptocrats.

#LandReform
#ScotPol
#Greenwashing

+ -
+ -
Simon Brooke
Simon Brooke  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"The high profile failure of a
local community to be able to enact a community
buyout of the Tayvallich Estate in Argyll – which
had an asking price of £10.5 million, equivalent
to around £7,800 per hectare – is indicative of
Scotland’s broader failure to enact #LandReform
and will only be one of many such failures until
reform is embedded. A local #LandTax can, should,
and must be a part of this reform"

#ScotPol

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

+ -
Simon Brooke
Simon Brooke  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

"the one favoured by Common
Weal, is a #LandTax or Property Tax (PT) based
on the market value of the land. This tax takes
into account the price of the land plus any
developments on it, essentially treating the
11Common Weal Taxing Scotland’s Land
land itself as no different from any other kind
of property in terms of being a valuable, and
thus taxable, wealth asset"

[formatting from PDF, which I have not tidied up. This is how the publishers wanted you to read it]

https://commonweal.scot/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Taxing-Land.pdf

+ -
Simon Brooke
Simon Brooke  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

This is where Common Weal is JUST DEAD WRONG. This is a BAD plan.

Why?

It taxes the poor crofter and the working farmer at exactly the same rate as the vast holdings of hereditary aristocrats and unscrupulous #Greenwashing kleptocrats.

There is no incentive to split estates into smaller holdings: instead, economies of scale drive expansion.

Any #LandTax MUST have a proportional element -- as #IncomeTax does -- so that the more land you hold, the more tax you pay on each hectare.

Simon Brooke
Simon Brooke  ·  3 weeks ago

Content Warning

My alternate suggestion -- for an exponential tax based on land area alone -- has multiple advantages.

Firstly, it is extremely easy and cheap to assess: a hectare is just a hectare, either you own it or you don't. If someone does, they owe tax; if no one does, it's common. And if the person who owns it can't (or doesn't) pay the tax, it reverts to common.

Second, the formula is easily tunable, and local taxing regimes can democratically set different values for the variables.

Cont'd

  • Activities
  • Search
  • Direct Messages
  • Notifications
  • Profile
  • Groups
    • ["Sorry, a condition didn't have any `case` matching the data it was expecting", "nil"]