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If you don't tax commercial activity and wealth, you end up taxing work. This kills societies.

You can tax land? A hard working person living a frugal life and who doesn’t buy real estate can avoid paying the vast majority of taxes in such a country, e.g. Singapore.

Such a person would be still paying that tax indirectly as it would be funded by any payments for the "land they use" e.g. housing rent would be directly influenced by that land tax, just as the prices of services (rent can often be ~30% of the base costs of urban service providers).

Not if tax is on land value (excluding value of buildings) The supply curve is usually vertical so price is fixed by demand.

I do not know whether this system exists anywhere, but it is possible.

that seems even more perverse than the potential productivity land-use tax that georgists usually suggest.

A fellow Georgist. I see you are a man of culture and scholarship.

> If you don't tax commercial activity and wealth, you end up taxing work. This kills societies.

In general this is true but if you are one of the few tax havens in the world then you have so much money going through that a very small percentage tax adds up to enough money to keep your citizens quiet. This only works locally though. Globally, other societies are getting screwed.

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