Friday, January 16, 2009

My Manifesto!

PVT (property value tax): 7% Land Value and Intellectual Property Value
Property value is self decided, however the property can be purchased (with a delay) at the decided price. Money raised by the PVT to pay for a citizens dividend (Deliberately NOT called a citizens income).

Abolish Time Taxes: All taxes on time (income tax, NI & corporation tax) or transfers (CGT stamp duty) abolished and apologies sent out.

Voting Reform: Democracy replaced with Revocracy: for X candidates you get X-1 votes, which you can use to select who you don't want to represent you. Would end the party system!

Debt Licensing: To be legally allowed to borrow you have to pass a test showing you can work out compound interest and the final amount. Make it very illegal to lend to those who cannot work out interest.

Gun Control: I don't like the government giving itself special privileges, so if you do the same training as the police, you can arm yourself to the same level.

Prison Reform: Split Prison into 3 sections.
Reform Prison for first time criminals, resources concentrated here to make sure they don't come back.
Second chance prison, much tougher.
Holding Pen: Anti Social Criminals who are just a burden on society will spend the rest of their days here. No expense spent. Prison expected to be self feeding.

Drug Reform:
All drugs decriminalised. Being "high" treated as a form of voluntary and temporary mental illness (not sharing the same reality) requiring temporary separation from the rest of society until the effects wear off. Duty of care for the establishment providing drugs.

Monetary Policy:
BoE supervision to require banks to change reserves with changes in M4. Ban cash bonuses for Bank staff, must take bonus in Bonds sold by the bank.

17 comments:

Sackerson said...

Brevity is the soul of wit, but I need it expanding so I can understand how it'll all work. But ve-e-ery interesting.

Paul Lockett said...

I'm with you on a good chunk of that. In fact, spookily, I posted on my blog about the idea of patent value taxation this morning and I've just been working on a post about gun control along similar lines to your comment.

AntiCitizenOne said...

Sackerson et al,
I was hope to get get comments in order to refine my ideas. My ideas are not a gestalt yet. These are just semi connected ideas.

Paul,
I've added your Blog to my list. Why do you think you need to stop people lowering the value of their patents? I see no need as price is a signal and lowering the price means it's more affordable to buy.

Paul Lockett said...

My main reason is that it would probably result in many inventions falling into the public domain much more quickly, rather than remaining under patent protection for 20 years when the vast majority of the return may be in the first few years.

I wouldn't be completely uncomfortable with a situation where patent holders could revalue downwards, but, unlike land titles, the ultimate intention of a patent is to get inventions out of private control and into free public use, so there are arguably reasons to approach the system differently in order to make that happen.

Paul Lockett said...

And thanks for adding my blog to your list!

Beerwulf said...

I like the debt licencing concept, although administering it could be hard - it looks like a job for a nice big Government database. Lovely.

Not so sure about drug reform, however, simply because alcohol will fall into this category, and I don't fancy having to stay in the pub until my hangover has worn off.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AC1, 7% LVT seems about right, although in some of your workings you seem to apply it to total property values including bricks'n'mortar, or else you wouldn't end up with a CD of £12,000 per person per annum, it would be more like £2,000 per person, i.e. it would raise in the order of £200 billion, minus £80 billion for 'core functions' like law and order, defence, refuse collection, street lighting.

But I am still not convinced with the 7% Patent Value Tax (the same applies to Paul's post).

I agree that in principle, people who make money from IP (whether copyright, design right, patent or trademark) get state protection and ought to pay something extra for it.

But ...

a) The value of a copyright or design right is merely an estimate of net present value of future income therefrom. All this guesstimating is a bit gimmicky, it would be much fairer and simpler to have a 7% income tax on income derived from intellectual property*. That would collect much the same amount and, between the patent being registered and it expiring, the state would have collected 7% of the total value.

* Most double tax treaties have a clause that regulates what this rate is - anywhere between 0% and 20%.

b) I have a problem distinguishing what exactly IP is. If Warner Brothers sends JK Rowling a cheque for film royalties, this is clearly IP. If her publisher pays her £5,000 to attend a book-signing, is this so closely related to the copyright that it counts as exploitation of IP?

The rest seems absolutely fine by me, with the exception of bank bonuses, do not imagine for one second that it will take them more than a minute to suss out a way round this, even if this were a desirable end. More to the point, with a hefty LVT as you are proposing, there would be much less credit bubbles to much less opportunity for banks to manipulate them.

AntiCitizenOne said...

>I like the debt licensing concept, although administering it could be hard - it looks like a job for a nice big Government database. Lovely.

I think I'll put the emphasis on the lender to check by making it illegal to charge interest on the money, that means that loans are paid back at 0%APR for the unqualified borrowers who get lent to by lazy lending institutions.

Paul Lockett said...

With regard to Mark's comments:

The value of a copyright or design right is merely an estimate of net present value of future income therefrom. All this guesstimating is a bit gimmicky

Exactly the same principle applies to land, where capital values are an estimate of the NPV of future rents. Businesses already guesstimate the value of their assets, so this wouldn't be a major leap.

I have a problem distinguishing what exactly IP is.

Which is one of the reasons why basing the charge on income from the asset, rather than its capital value, is problematic. The holder will generally tend to claim that some income streams are not dependent on the asset, whereas the capital valuation has to be an unbiased assessment.

If her publisher pays her £5,000 to attend a book-signing, is this so closely related to the copyright that it counts as exploitation of IP?

I would say not, as she is being paid as the author, which would be the case even if she were not the copyright holder, but in any case, if the charge were based on the market value of the copyright, rather than income, there would be no need to differentiate.

Anton Howes said...

I like some of the Prison reform - it's sort of what the SLP's wanting to get at, but you've put it much better - the rehabilitation and focus on preventing people becoming "part of the system" or criminalised in the sense of self-perception in order to prevent reoffending.
However this doesn't even need to be a type of prison - we at the SLP have preferred to think of tougher community service, etc. although we're still looking into the most effective methods of preventing reoffending based on empirical data.

The holding pen idea is interesting, as self-sufficiency could perhaps even have rehabilitating effects (although equally could lead to cannibalism!) There are expenses necessary however - particularly in the case of security and guards, as well as the maintenance of infrastructure. There are a few things to iron out here.

Revocracy is interesting as it focusses people on the faults of politicians as opposed to the merits - I'm not sure that this is a recipe for success seeing as we already expend much bile on our existing form of democracy.

Debt licensing - not very free-market, this one.

LVT is decided on the basis of every home being up for sale and self-valued? I think I read this by you somewhere. If so, clever.

Big question now is, how would you start the transition from the existing system to yours without knocking heads together? Or is that taking it slightly too seriously?

Anonymous said...

Can I check how the PVT will work? I value my house at £x, and will therefore pay 7% of £x per year in tax. After the period of time (a year? 2 years?) if someone offers me £x for it, do I have to sell it? Presumably I can accept any bid I like for it, not necessarily the first person to offer £x, and not necessarily the highest?

If the above is true I will value my home at £10. When I am forced to sell it I will accept the offer of £10 from my sister, who will allow me to live there rent free. Of course I will do the same for her £10 house, and we will swap back when the next term is up. No need to involve estate agents so no fees there. The land registry fees will be very large (in proportion to selling price), but with only 70p per year PVT, a £12000 citizens dividend and no income tax, I will do rather well out of the new system.

Have I missed or misunderstood something?

Anonymous said...

BTW: I completely agree with your desire to shift taxation from income to property ownership. I'm just not convinced by your PVT, as opposed to a more conventional LVT.

Paul Lockett said...

Ed, I think the system would have to work something along the lines of the land registry being an open system where anybody could see the valuation on a plot of land and bid above it, so your sister's 10p would be outbid by somebody who would pay 11p and then put a much higher valuation on the register.

Obviously, there would be details to be ironed out, but I think that's roughly the way it would have to operate.

Anonymous said...

Paul, my understanding of the proposed PVT is that the current owner set the value. What you're suggesting is that prospective purchasers set the value, which would work better but seems more like normal LVT. The questions that remain are:
* Am I forced to sell?
* If so, do I have to sell to the highest bidder?
* To prevent someone bidding an extremely high value, just to force me to pay more tax, can I call their bluff by forcing them to pay what they have previously bid? What penalties for them if they cannot pay?
* Do bids expire after a certain time period? e.g. if I discover a major problem with my home and want to get rid of it, can I still force a previous bidder to buy it at their previous offer?

Paul Lockett said...

Ed, I can't guarantee that AC1 had exactly the same idea in mind as me, but the way I would see it working is:

If I hold a plot of land, I have to put on the land register how much I would sell it for and pay tax as a percentage of that amount. If I say I would accept £100,000 and you decide that the land has a higher value to you, let's say £120,000, you can put that amount on the register and take ownership of the land, so long as you pay me my valuation of £100,000. You then have to pay tax as a percentage of £120,000, until such time as you increase your own valuation, or somebody meets your asking price.

So, to answer your questions:

"Am I forced to sell?"

Yes, if somebody offered you the amount you said you would be prepared to sell for.

"If so, do I have to sell to the highest bidder?"

In effect yes, because, even if you sold privately to a lower bidder, they would then end up being outbid themselves.

"To prevent someone bidding an extremely high value, just to force me to pay more tax, can I call their bluff by forcing them to pay what they have previously bid? What penalties for them if they cannot pay?"

If somebody were to make an offer to buy through the land registry, they would be legally obliged to buy from you. The penalty for them if they can't pay would have to be decided, but I would expect that at the very least they would be required to pay some kind of compensation to the landholder for wasted time.

"Do bids expire after a certain time period?"

Bids would result in a done deal straight away, as anybody offering an increased valuation would have to go through with the purchase.

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