We are aware that at one time there was a Swedish land value taxation movement. If you have found this from an internet search, you may be Swedish-speaking and possibly able to assist. We would in particular like to make our summary document "What is Land Value Taxation?" available in as many languages as possible.What would you call "land value tax" in Swedish? Land is variously jord, mark and område, and a plot is a tomt. Value is normally värde. Tax is skatt, but land value tax is not a tax but a payment for a benefit received - in other words it is a user charge. Payment normally translates into avgift, eg for a place in a car park. Which would make LVT Jordvärdesavgift (-en). In Danish, the word is Jordværdiskatt but, like "taxation", it keeps the notion of LVT is a tax. Old Swedish literature dating from the 1920s uses the same term as the Danish ie jordvärdeskatt and also refers to "jordräntans socialisering"
Sweden has traditionally had high quality and expensive public services, paid for out of very high taxes on income and high taxes on employment. According to some sources, this has led to an unrecorded unemployment rate of around 20%. The tax authorities, Skatteverket, admit that about 10% of tax income is being lost by fraud, though obviously that is at best a guess. Long term, the system is not sustainable.
There is a slightly different attitude to land and there are not the vested interests that lock it out of public discussion in the UK. The LVT movement in Sweden appears to have withered when the country turned itself into a sort of benign soviet constitutional monarchy. Now, people want to keep the benefits without the drawbacks. LVT would make this possible but the notion is virtually forgotten in the country.
In the meantime, all the keywords are in this article so if you have found it from a search and happen to be interested, your help would be appreciated to translate some of the material on this web site. Please contact henry.bn[at]gmail.com or use the Contact Form.
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