> "Why tax property?"
Because its appreciation in value is largely unearned wealth, especially in a country like England with a long history of aristocracy and landed gentry.
Because its appreciation in value is largely unearned wealth, especially in a country like England with a long history of aristocracy and landed gentry.
You might search for the term "unearned increment." It was a common expression to point out what people who reaped but did not sow receive due to our failure to collect the economic rent.
One person's unearned increment is another's — and likely many others' — lost birthright. Who is entitled to it? All of us! How do we implement this? Land value taxation.
The whole thing about tax is to extract the maximum number of feathers from the goose with the minimum amount of hissing. Taxing property is easy "because it's there" - you can't hide a house, or a barn, or a factory.
Though deciding _how_ to tax property is a bit more difficult. At one time they tried taxing by the number of chimneys a house had[1]. Another was the Window Tax[2].
Have you ever heard of the phrase "They got away with it scot free"? I was born in the village which (by legend) introduced the Scot Tax - not a per-head levy in our Friends born north of Hadrian's Wall but rather a tax on properties across the Romney Marshes, specifically raised to pay for maintenance of the sea wall. Houses below sea level had to pay the tax, houses above sea level were 'scot free'.[3]
... And people think tax policy is boring!
[1] Technically they taxed hearths, but it's a lot easier to count chimneys from the outside of a house than it is to gain entry to the house to count the number of fireplaces - https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/...
[2] You can still see many houses in the UK with bricked up windows. It wasn't done for aesthetic purposes; it was done to limit the level of tax that could be levied on the property - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_tax