30/11/2013: Land Tax back in the (Irish) news

It appears that after years of research and arguments in the media, having first done the wrong thing, the Irish Labor Party is now drifting into the space of supporting the only tax that makes sense in the context of charging against fixed assets: land value tax.

The report on this are here: http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/labour-annual-conference-votes-to-replace-property-tax-615824.html

Those of you who follow this blog and my research would be familiar with the following three papers on the topic:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2029515
and
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2047518
and
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2029519

Additionally, Ronan Lyons also produced excellent research on the topic: http://smarttaxfiles.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/site-value-tax-in-ireland-identify-consulting-final-report.pdf

Karl Deter contributed to public debate extensively: http://smarttaxes.org/a-fair-property-tax-a-public-debate/

And Smart Taxes network produced core research funding, supports and publications platforms: http://smarttaxes.org/

12/7/2012: Wealth taxes - coming up next to Europe near you...

And so wealth taxes (on those who are not all that wealthy, in fact) is a matter of EU-wide policy now, thanks to Schauble: link here and here. Note, the idea is to tax property assets in excess of €250,000 - with an additional one-off levy of 10% on top of other taxes and presumably, as per talk in one of the links about 'capital taxes' other assets can be included. And the original source for the grand idea is here.

Thus, the logic goes, you've saved for the retirement (which requires at least as much in provisions as the tax bound) and you are not a drag on social pensions system. Off you go, pay up...

One question - what happens if two years from now property values drop and your property 'wealth' declines to below €250K... do you get a refund?.. Question two - what happens when tax is levied and as the result, property markets go into further contractions, forcing question one above to the forefront?.. Question three - what happens in the long run when taxes have depleted not only disposable (investable) incomes, but also investable (and largely illiquid) wealth - do pensions provisions go up?.. do Governments step in to provide cheap capital for investment?.. does Schauble and his friends drop their own pensions demands to compensate economy for €230 billion they've sucked out of investment pool?..

Idiots squad has never been so much enforced in Europe as today.