The Beneficial Effects
of a Single Tax on Land Values

Joseph Danziger

[Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, November-December 1915]

The following outline of Single Tax by Joseph Danziger was inserted last week in all the Washington city papers as a news item. This is probably the first time that such a comprehensive treatment of Single Tax principles has been published by the papers of a large city simply as a matter of news and without solicitation.

DEFINITION:

The Single Tax means the raising of all public revenue for national, State and local purposes, through taxation of the value of land irrespective of improvements in or on it. This excludes all tariffs, licenses, excise taxes, personal property taxes, improvement taxes and all other forms of direct and indirect taxes on labor or its products.

WHY ADVOCATED:

Its adoption is urged because the taxes which it would abolish tend to check and hamper industry and enterprise. It is neither just nor expedient that a man who puts land to use should be taxed more than one who holds an equally valuable piece of land out of use; yet that is what the present system of taxation actually requires.

RESULTS OF PRESENT SYSTEM:

The result is seen in: -

• an enormous amount of valuable land withheld from use on speculation;
• in land but poorly used;
• in old, unsanitary buildings where better ones should be;
• in a lack of proper housing causing congestion in cities;
• and in an army of unemployed in a country with sufficient natural resources to support a greater population than exists in the whole world.

RESULTS OF SINGLE TAX:

The Single Tax would force those now withholding valuable land from use to either use it themselves or let others do so. This would open to labor the natural resources of the country and give opportunities for employment to all who would want it.

JUSTICE OF SINGLE TAX:

On the ethical side it is urged that what is produced by individual labor rightfully belongs to individuals. In taxing labor products the government commits robbery. Land, however, is not produced by human labor, and what value it has, aside from the value of improvements, is produced through the presence, industry and enterprise of the whole community. In taxing land values therefore there is taken for public use what the public has created and to whom it consequently belongs by right. To allow individuals, as we do now, to appropriate land values for private use is to allow robbery of the public.

WHERE ADOPTED:

Though the Single Tax is nowhere in complete operation, the principle has been applied for local purposes in many cities, towns and rural districts of New Zealand, Australia and Western Canada. In California's irrigation districts it has been applied for irrigation revenue. Germany applied it to her Chinese province of Kiau Chiau. Pueblo, Colorado, voted to put it in effect in 1916.

LITERATURE:

For complete argument students should read "Progress and Poverty" and other works by Henry George, to be found in all Public Libraries. Literature on the subject is furnished free by the Fels Fund of America, Cincinnati, Ohio; the Manhattan Single Tax Club, New York City; the Chicago Single Tax Club, Chicago, Ill.; and the Tax Reform Association, Washington, D. C.; and numerous organizations in other cities.