Subject: Tax Reform Comment: Members of the Tax Reform Committee Part of government's function is social engineering. Taxation is a primary tool of social engineering. Social engineering should reward what is needed by the community and punish what is harmful. Productivity is beneficial to the community. The income tax punishes productivity and needs to be eliminated. Land speculation is harmful to the community but is rewarded by present real estate property tax systems. Solution: get rid of the income tax, and enact a federal location value charge based on the assessed value of all privately held land in the United States. This charge would not be a tax on structures upon the land or in any way impinge upon productivity derived from use of the location. Moving to a charge on the location value of land and getting rid of our totally debilitating income tax will reward all that is needed by the community and discourage functions that are harmful. By the way: a charge based on the location value of land is: progressive since most really valuable land is owned by the very wealthy. is unavoidable since there is no way to hide even a square foot of land. So far no one has found a way to move land off shore to a Swiss bank account. cannot be passed on to renters. And finally, recall that large amounts of United State?s land is being bought up by foreign speculators. This would be an excellent way to collect revenue from sources that are presently exempt from income tax rules. Respectfully submitted Donald J. Killoren email: donkill@charter.net |