Killer arguments against LVT, not (21)

Anonymous asked "So who puts a value on the land and what size of official army is required to deal with rises and falls on the market value and appeals?"

To which I replied (numbered footnotes added as afterthoughts):

"So who puts a value on the land?"

HM Land Registry's computer can do it, as they know plot sizes, recent selling prices and ownership (1). All they then have to do is average it out over small geographic areas (postcode sector, council ward, whatever), knock off an arbitrary amount [per square yard] to make it more like land value tax and less like property value tax and Bob's your uncle.

"what size of official army is required to deal with rises and falls on the market value and appeals?"(2)

A couple of dozen to run the spreadsheets at HMLR (which updates automatically for changes in values, as based on recent actual sales) plus six hundred to hear appeals (let's say five for each postcode area, of which there are 124 in the UK). Seeing as I envisage a fairly mechanical/automated valuation system, there's not really much to appeal about except for obvious arithmetical errors. (3)

Seeing as my ideal LVT would replace Council Tax/Council Tax Benefit, Business Rates, Stamp Duty, Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, TV licence fee, Insurance Premium Tax, Section 106 agreements, roof tax, shared ownership crapola etc etc, I am quite confident that we'd see a significant overall reduction in the number of civil servants.
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(1) They can merge their database with the existing databases of all properties liable to Council Tax or to Business Rates to iron out any missing bits. There's another register for agricultural land (i.e. for those land-owners who receive Single Farm Subsidies), which would be exempt from LVT - let's scrap the subsidies first - that's the main thing, and the owners of the other bits and pieces have the choice of finally registering ownership (and paying the tax) or forfeiting it.

(2) Appeals? What appeals? See (3) below - for the sake of saving £100-odd every year, most people didn't bother appealing against Council Tax bandings and wouldn't bother appealing against LVT valuations (especially as they would change every year!). And every subsequent purchaser would sign a separate form confirming that he or she agreed that the plot-size was X sq yds and that he or she agrees that the plot will be valued on the basis of average values in that [postcode sector/council ward/whatever]. In any event, whose fault is it if there are endless appeals?

Sure, there will be marginal situations that may superficially appear unfair, but so what?

The law is the law, and there will always be winners and losers: let's imagine Labour would like to delay the next General Election until the last possible date, 3 June 2010. Let's imagine that the EU manage to bully or bribe the Irish into approving the Lisbon Treaty on 2 October 2009 and BluNuLabour decide to bring the next General Election forward by six months. That simple act will deprive a few hundred thousand British Citizens, born before 2 June 1992 but after 2 December 1991 of the right to vote at a General Election. Will any of these young people, several thousand of whom will die before the next General Election, and thus be deprived of ever being able to exercise their [second] most important democratic right, launch an appeal? Will they begrudge those people who are still alive and can vote on 3 November 2009 (but who die in the next six months) their last opportunity to do so?

(3) Don't forget that it took them about six months to band all properties in Great Britain for Council Tax back in 1990-91. This was pretty rough and ready - the gap in values between the upper and lower limits of each bands is about twenty percent, so you might be paying just as much Council Tax as a property worth nineteen per cent more; or you may be paying a lot more Council Tax than a property that is worth just one per cent less, but as the difference is between bands is only £100 - £200 there wasn't a wave of appeals, people just paid up.

And don't forget that all residential properties in Northern Ireland were revalued as at 1 January 2005, when they finally replaced Domestic Rates and replaced them with a property value tax of about 0.78% per annum. Of course there was grumbling and rumbling, but there were more winners than losers and very few of the losers ended up more than £100 worse off every year, so that was that.