But that's ridiculous. Who assesses the maximum developed potential? The infra-structure has been developed by someone (in the 19th century by private capital) and so they get penalised. I thought the theory was land was taxed based on it being undeveloped? That again has a problem, as it would encourage the whole country to be concreted over - a person owning it would be taxed and so would need to get value from it rather than leaving it as a nature reserve, or whatever. The whole thing seems utterly nonsensical and destructive in either case.

There are such things as planning laws.

A nature reserve (or other "green" land that has no development potential) may be given a value of £0.001p per hectare, whereas a site in The City may be valued at £1bn per hectare.

Look at the DLR: Real estate prices jumped massively along the route, some were empty sites, contributing little or nothing to the local economy at all. On completion, the owners of thos sites saw a massive increase in the value, while the UK taxpayer footed the bill. Is that equitable?

And when you ask "who will value the maximum developed potential?", it's not something that we have no expertise in. A massive revaluation went ahead during the 1980s in preparation of the Poll Tax. Look back to the conversion to North Sea gas as another example of a huge change in infrastructure. I can also remember the arguments against unleaded gasoline, with oil companies and their stooge politicians complaining that "it would mean AN unleaded pump on every forecourt.

The "Tax Gap" is too large, something radical needs to happen to close it

But the point is any land has "development" potential. So it's just ridiculous.

Yugoslavia thought there was an alternative. And I agreed with their stance. Didn't end too well for them, tho.

Maybe Russia and China can cobble together some kind of ideological pathway. But Western trans-national capital can bring some almighty firepower to bear on anyone bucking the trend.

They are bleeding Russia dry by flooding the oil markets with cheap crude.

In any case, the Russians don't seem too different. Their style of corruption wears only a different cap.

No, I reckon it will take a major war, population shift or calamity to shake the current corporate model. Which is usually the case with any dominant system.

It is only ridiculous if you look at it through closed eyes.

How can "any land" have development potential if there is no permission to develop it?

In 2007 the Valuation Office Agency conducted a study and it was estimated that the average price of land designated for agriculture in England was £9,287 per hectare, while for different kinds of industrial and commercial use it was between £630,000 and £749,000 per hectare, and for residential use it was as much as £2.46 million per hectare. So it's not too difficult to determine the value of the land and I'd suggest that's far simpler than determining the value of buildings. Tony Vickers, at the School of Surveying, Kingston University, is pioneering techniques to create maps that, instead of showing contour lines depicting topography, show lines marking off localities and zones with equal land values per hectare or square metre. So, it really isn't too difficult, especially given advances in computing and satellite imagery

A start could be made by using LVT to replace inheritance tax and stamp duty, unpopular taxes that only arise when someone dies or something is sold

Even that well-known, left-wing agitator Winston Churchill could see the problem. This from a Commons speech in 1909:

“Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived … the unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.”

If you look at the society's where it has worked their initial structures is very different from what we have here. The size of the economy of Singapore, Taiwan, Norway, Hong Kong is very different to the UK.

Who pays the LVT on hospitals, schools and local council/government owned land which will be significant. We want to encourage house building and inward industrial investment which realistically has to happen on green belt land - how will your development potential based LVT work in that case?

I am not as sceptical as I am sure you think, I am genuinely interested in understanding how you think this would be administered and how it would work.

Freeing up greenbelt land for development is simple, we freed up thousands of acres of agricultural land immediately post WW2. Land is bought and taxed at the current rate of use, so agricultural land would be valued and taxed as agricultural land, unless and until it has planning permission. Once that permission is achieved, the land is then valued and taxed according to its developed potential.

As there is no realistic development potential on land owned by schools, hospitals etc. the land will attract a very low valuation. With LVT, it is only the land value that is determined, not the buildings that are on them.

The first taxes that LVT could replace are: Council Tax and stamp duty

Do government owned bodies pay council tax, do the council pay council tax on the buildings they own ?

I know that government bodies cannot register for VAT and so effectively are "end users" as far as that is concerned so why would they pay tax to the department that allocates their budget from the taxation pot ?

If I gift you £1000 to spend on a project would you expect me to ask for £200 of it back as a "tax" ?

If there were no development opportunities on land owned by schools why has the government been selling off all the playing fields?

Are you suggesting that land say in the centre of London that currently has buildings sat on it would attract this tax or just unused green belt land?

Because this is no longer going to be a local tax but a national one and to make things fair it must apply to all. You can't say to a landlord/farmer you pay a tax on this land but a local authority is exempt that's not equitable and creates and unfair market.

The NHS still pays employers NI even though the money it pays in is recycled to fund it.