Leon Phat           

• Repeal Prop 13
• Inaugurate a Land Value Tax
• Eliminate the State Income Tax
• Eliminate the State Sales Tax
• Institute a Severance Tax on Petroleum

Each of these proposals deserves a full page, and you'll find those pages through the navigation bar to the left, but here's the skinny on Phat's thinking.

 Proposition 13 deep chills property taxes on all real estate at the time of sale of a property. That promotes land speculation and creates a very unequal relationship between property owners as they pay for government services. For instance, all property owners on a given block of downtown San Francisco receive the same Fire Department protection, but those who bought their property a long time ago are paying disproportionately much less than more recent buyers for that protection.

      And as time goes on and longtime property owners--both commercial and residential--hang on to their properties, less and less tax revenue comes from real estate with the result that more and more of the cost of operating the Fire Department comes from the beneficiary of that protection, the land owner and the rent he charges, while the difference is made up by bond financing, increases in the sales tax, state income tax, and business taxes.

     Those who can charge higher rent because of the provision of public infrastructure (such as the Fire Department), should pay that higher rent to community to pay for that service. But that's not how Prop 13 does it. And that's why land owners can make gobs of dough while renters and leasers get creamed by high rents and business taxes!

And that's why Leon Phat will repeal Prop 13 and replace it with the fantastic Land Value Tax.

The State Income Tax is only credible as a morally defensible source of public revenue so long as unearned income is not eliminated. Even then the State Income Tax should apply only to the top 10% of wealth holders in California.

Leon intends to eliminate the State Income Tax altogether after the implementation of the Land Value Tax. Here's why.

Work should not be taxed. Building a house, running a restaurant, designing a drainage system, teaching children are each contributions to society. In no way are these drags upon society, yet a tax on these professions--or upon any other line of work--is an implicit declaration that work is not in itself a full and sufficient contribution to society. Work is earned income.

In contrast is owning nature, including the nature . . . or land . . . underneath cities and towns, and the nature that is oil in the ground, naturally growing forsts, minerals in the ground, water, the radio frequency spectrum, etc. It may come as a surprise to you, but owning nature pays massive aggregate dividends to those who own it. The annual income potential of the land of San Francisco alone exceeds $27 billion! And currently less than $2 billion is retrieved for the public via the property tax!

That's why and how Leon will relieve workers from carrying the tax burden, and heap it in full upon the owners of nature who derive income from owning nature, not from doing work. Leon will junk the royalist income tax, replacing it with the commonwealth tax on mere ownership of nature. The commonwealth tax is the Land Value Tax described elsewhere.

A Land Value Tax (LVT) is a tax equal to the rent potential of any given parcel of land.

It's moral authority is simply this: Nature is a natural right of every human being, and when someone "owns" a piece of land, you should not have to pay them for the privilege of using it, they should pay you and the rest of society to stay off!

This is your earth as much as theirs, and they/you should pay society for the right to call a particular piece of the earth theirs/yours.

Starting from that principled moral position, we can build a much more just society.

The LVT will eliminate land speculation. After all, why buy land as an investment when all of its income potential is taxed away?

LVT is not a tax on buildings or other improve-ments to or on the land. In fact, LVT removes the necessity of taxing buildings! Why tax people for improving their home, or their business?

Why tax workers for swinging a hammer, milling lumber, installing a toilet. That's what the current property tax does. Leon says, "Cut that out!"