The past few decades have been lean ones for LVT because the spread of owner-occupation and aspirations to owner-occupation has led to a political situation where all of the political parties have been scared to advocate LVT for fear of losing votes. But time will change this state of affairs, as was pointed out by a commentator called "imperium" on the Guardian's "Comment is Free" site.

Imperium writes
"Labour and the Tories both have long been counting on the fact that the electoral class does not yet comprise a sizeable number of rental tenants, and all their policies and the weight of legislation have been pitched at home-owners and landlords. However, there is an entire generation about to come of age, soon to enter into into that period of their lives when they care passionately about civic and national issues, and actually participate in the electoral process - and a large proportion of this generation are locked out of the property market."

"Taxation, Growth and Employment" is the title of a pamphlet produced by the right wing (we hesitate to use the term) think tank "Policy Exchange", which describes itself as "an independent, non-partisan educational charity. We work with academics and policy makers from across the political spectrum. We are particularly interested in free market and localist solutions to public policy questions." Using "centre-right means to progressive ends", it advocates "the wider use of market forces and the promotion of individual responsibility are ideas traditionally associated with the centre right. But we are interested in how these tools could be used to achieve progressive ends - to give new opportunities to groups that don’t have them today."

It is a useful critique of all existing taxes which provides useful ammunition for presenting our own case. But what are we to make of this?

Taxes would have no effect upon growth if the following two conditions held:

 LVT is a tax on a revenue stream, not a wealth tax. The selling price of land titles is a derivative value. To levy LVT on these selling prices is to give out the wrong message - it makes people think they are paying a tax on their wealth, when we know that land is not wealth, but that land ownership is a claim on wealth - a subtle but crucial difference.

To be an effective source of revenue, land value tax must be about 30% of rental value at the outset. This is between 1% and 1.5% of selling prices, and that is part of the difficulty.

• First, selling prices include an element of hope value.
• Second, a tax on selling prices is "lumpy" because it is a percentage of a large figure - small variations in the tax rate produce large differences in both the amounts payable and in the yield.
  
• Third, it is a tax on a value which cannot be realised except on sale, and therefore unfair in principle. (unlike a tax on rental values which can either be realised immediately or are an imputed income).
• Fourth, the tax results in a reduction in the capital value of land, and so to tax it is like sawing oneself off the log one is sitting on.

Article by Fred Foldvary, writing on US web site Progress.org. We could not have put this better ourselves.

The East London Line extension has now opened with this fleet of new trains. With further extensions it will eventually link Highbury with various destinations in south and south-east London. There are many journeys that people will now be able to make faster and more easily. Of course this will have a significant effect on rents and property prices, and so yet again we shall see public investment creating land value which will end up in private pockets. No wonder the Treasury is tight-fisted about spending money on railway improvements.

The April 2010 edition of Practical Politics covers a wide range of apparently disparate topics, all of which are ultimately linked to the ownership of land and what happens to the income stream it yields.