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Young would-be home buyers who took Prosper Australia’s advice – Don’t buy now! – exactly a year ago have typically saved themselves $58,000.
I congratulate everyone who stood aside from this dreadful Ponzi scheme known as the Australian property market.
These savings are staggering – they are genuine and they are conservatively calculated. For home buyers who waited, it is as if someone just slipped this much in their wallet.
It would take years to save $58,000 from after-tax earnings.
Consider a typical Melbourne first-home buyer couple with a 20% deposit ($120,000) ready to buy a home at the median $585,000 a year ago. Instead, they waited.
Their savings:
Melbourne median house prices have fallen 6.1% (ABS) – $35,000
The difference between Melbourne median rents $17,680 (TUV) and interest at 7.46% (WBC) on a $465,000 mortgage (ignoring stamp duty, principal repayments, rates, insurance, depreciation and repairs) – $17,009
Interest earned on $120,000 savings at 5.5% (ignoring tax) – $6,600
TOTAL: $58,609
There is a further long-term benefit not included above: the smaller required mortgage would leave an extra $250 per month interest in a buyer’s pocket, or $41,000 over a 25-year loan. This money would be available at the buyers’ discretion for living expenses or to accelerate principal repayments.
This is not a cue to immediately buy a house.
Prosper expects house prices to fall much further. We repeat our forecast made February 23 of house price falls of at least 15% and possibly 20% this calendar year.
A fall of this size will deliver massive further savings to those who resist the temptation to commit to a working life of toil lived 90 days from bankruptcy.
We urge prospective home buyers to focus on saving as large a deposit as possible. Avoid exchanging renting a house for renting money from the bank. That is not the path to economic freedom.
Don’t buy now!
David Collyer is campaign manager of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.prosper.org.au/">Prosper Australia</a>.
 
 
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dcollyer-7rQRVBSdz6

First-home Melbourne buyers who didn't buy last year saved $58,000: Prosper Australia

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Peter Wargent used Property Observer a few weeks ago to have a chortle over my February 2012 prediction of a steep and imminent land price correction.
<a target="_blank" href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/economy/average-investors-are-notoriously-poor-at-timing-property-market-cycles-pete-wargent/2013080863794">He gloats: “Since the property market troughs in mid-2012, unfortunately, prices have not fallen by 20% or even 15%.”</a>  
Hmmm.  Prices still remain well short of the 2010 peak.  Add three years of insistent 2-3% inflation to the following graph and the real price changes start to hurt.      
<img alt="collyer_aug_28_one" height="281" width="470" src="/images/stories/2013/08/collyer_aug_28_one.png"> 
Clearly, my call was courageous. The bursting of The Great Australian Land Bubble has not yet happened.  The economic catastrophe for the heavily indebted and the banks remains dead ahead.  
I have been warning young home buyers against borrowing heavily and signing away their lifetime earnings to buy a house in a market climax.      
<img alt="collyer_aug_28_two" height="250" width="470" src="/images/stories/2013/08/collyer_aug_28_two.png">
I urge them to rent, which is an absolute bargain compared to buying.  If a negatively geared property investor wants to subsidise my lifestyle, I’ll have his dollar.  
I urge them to save a giant deposit.  If rent is dead money, then by the same measure so are interest payments.  There is no point exchanging paying rent on a house for paying economic rent to a bank.  
I urge them to build up their credit rating so they have ready access to loans in the future.  
And I urge them to await the inevitable correction.   A detailed explanation of these forces, which every Property Observer reader should know and understand, is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.prosper.org.au/2013/02/22/a-long-ugly-list-of-house-price-precedents/">here</a>. 
Peter Wargent cites various mainstream forecasters who see modest future rises and asks ‘what happens if the market forecasters are right?’  
If they are right, renting will continue to be an eye-popping deal.  
I am staggered that negative gearers are prepared to stick fistfuls of dollars into tenants’ pockets, month after month, year after year.  1.5 million ‘owners’ have 1.8 million rental properties, a little over one each. Almost all are middle income earners. 
They pay a very high price to reduce their income tax, as the graph below shows.    
A detailed critique of Negative Gearing can be found <a target="_blank" href="https://www.prosper.org.au/2012/10/04/written-off-negative-gearing-report/">here</a>.      
<img alt="collyer_aug_28_three" height="250" width="470" src="/images/stories/2013/08/collyer_aug_28_three.png">
The proportion of rental investors among buyers in the residential market is now around 35%.  They will never make a decent return at current price to rent ratios.  
Wealthy people do not enter into deals with low cash returns and big borrowings on fragile, high maintenance assets like houses.  If they love bricks and mortar, better returns are available in commercial property, without the stress.  
Peter Wargent asserts: “More than anything, my message was to do something by spending less that you earn and investing in a diversified portfolio of assets rather than fail conventionally by doing nothing.”  
Agreed.  This sentiment is central to achieving future financial independence.  
So, avoid lumpy illiquid assets, after-tax debt, poor returns and high risk.  I think this exactly describes Australia’s residential property market.  
Don’t Buy Now!
<hr>
David Collyer is campaign manager of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" rel="nofollow">Prosper Australia</a>.
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In the current market young buyers should save and rent, don't buy now! David Collyer

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GUEST OBSERVATION
The report of the parliamentary committee inquiry into the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) is out.
<a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Economics/Foreign_investment_in_real_estate/Tabled_Reports" target="_blank">The inquiry</a> has been conducted with great fanfare to edify the Liberals’ rising star Kelly O’Dwyer.
And what are its findings, once the party-political propaganda is removed?
<ul>
<li>
"A national register of land title transfers that records the citizenship and residency status of all purchases of Australian real estate would fix this and would allow facts to be injected into discussions about foreign investment, rather than ‘best guestimates’. A national register would also help with compliance and enforcement with the foreign investment framework – allowing data to be compared easily."
</li>
</ul>
Ahem, <a href="https://www.psma.com.au/?product=cadlite">we already have a national cadastra (land registry).</a>
It aggregates state land data and has existed since soon after Federation.  104 years ago, the Fisher ALP government believed large swathes of the country were under-utilised and vowed to break up the big estates. Fisher set up the national register within the Australian Tax Office as a pre-condition to imposing a federal land tax with the Land Tax Act 1910 and the Land Tax Assessment Act 1910.
The economics committee recommendation merely overlays citizenship and residency criteria on this existing dataset.  Data-matching departing visa-holders ought give a clear and complete picture of whether owners are in the country and compliant.
<ul>
<li>"The systems failure at FIRB needs to be repaired; and new resources injected into FIRB to ensure better audit, compliance and enforcement outcomes."
</li>
</ul>
Well, quite.  Underresourcing the FIRB began under the Howard government. The Liberals’ free-trade posturing (code for freedom to invest, not the icy blast of real competition on cosy monopolies) leads them to look away when foreign interests buy Australian assets – even where there are national strategic imperatives.  Smearing Rudd and Gillard for their budget errors does not mean Liberal hands are clean.
<ul>
<li>"The ability to sanction people who have breached the foreign investment framework more easily is critical. Hence the need to bring in a civil penalty regime for breaches of the foreign investment framework; along with the need to capture those people, who have previously stood outside the framework but materially impact the integrity of our foreign investment regime. For instance, third parties who knowingly assist foreign investors to breach the rules."
</li>
</ul>
The key word here is ‘sanction’, which likely refers to international law and the trans-national reach of our domestic laws.
Funny, the disputed asset is land, which remains subject to Australian law under all circumstances – it is remarkably difficult to shift offshore.  It could be argued any purchase by a foreigner ought have a covenant added to the title as a warning at sale of the property’s special status. Third-parties playing straw man for ultimate owners are notoriously difficult to expose – good luck bringing a civil case against any but the most obvious examples.
<ul>
<li>"Currently, non-resident foreign investors can profit from the illegal purchase of property. Given this, the current financial penalty that can be applied to a property, regardless of its value, is seen by many as simply the ‘cost of doing business’. Fines and pecuniary penalty orders should directly relate to the value of the property concerned. Furthermore investors who breach the framework should not be able to profit."
</li>
</ul>
Sure.  Just remove the cap on the fine and leave calculation to the judge.
The inquiry recommendations are typical for a conservative government. They are internally coherent, appear to resolve the issue and allow commerce to continue.
They do not address the core of the problem: foreign, absentee owners invest to collect the economic rent accruing to land from the activity of residents. They are not resident, so do not contribute to this activity.
As a parallel, Ireland suffered for centuries from absentee English landowners demanding rents in currency which they spent in London – a constant economic drain that beggared the country.
Why not use that recently-discovered federal land registry to charge them land tax at the state rate for the privilege of capturing the value from our soil and toil?
The maximum State Land Tax rates are: NSW 2.0%, Vic 2.25%, SA 3.7%,  QLD 1.75%, WA 2.67%, TAS 1.5%,  ACT 1.23%.
Prosper did not make a submission to the inquiry, despite our very strong interest in the matter.  We saw it as a witch hunt with a twist to enable the government to brand its critics racist.
Ed Husic for the ALP played the race card and leapt blindly into the Liberals trap, the damn fool. <a href="https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/11/alp-dill-opposes-enforcing-foreign-propery-regime/">Leith van Onselen shreds him here.</a> I can only wish the ALP’s parliamentarians had the vision and statesmanship of Andrew Fisher. We wouldn’t have a land bubble – or this fight over foreign interests.
David Collyer is policy director of <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" target="_blank">Prosper Australia</a>.
David ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Democrats in the 2013 federal election.
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The FIRB review failed to address the core problem - foreign absentee investors

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Victorian Labor in its <a href="https://www.danielandrews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Victorian-Labors-Project-10000.pdf">November 2014 election transport manifesto Project 10,000</a> boldly announced it would “remove our 50 worst level crossings” at a cost of $5-6 billion.  They are now the government.
Grade separation of rail – elevating the track or, preferably, putting it underground in cut and cover trenches – removes congestion for both rail and road.  Higher transit speeds shrink the city. The savings available are quite substantial.
I am sure Melburnians quite like all this – provided someone else pays for it, and their personal amenity improves.
Tantalisingly, Labor alluded to ‘value capture’ as a funding mechanism:
"This engineering work requires a considerable amount of track on either side of the crossing to be submerged underground, freeing up land at ground level.
"At some locations there is likely to be an opportunity to develop this available land and ‘capture the value’ created by the removal of the level crossing.  While development opportunities will vary with each site depending on physical restraints, Victorian Labor will actively pursue appropriate development opportunities and reinvest the proceeds generated back into further improvements to the public transport system."
Those ‘appropriate development opportunities’ are the subject of a fascinating research paper, <a href="https://msd.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/Intensifying%20Melbourne%202014_180dpi.pdf">Intensifying Melbourne by the Melbourne School of Design</a> at the University of Melbourne, looking at practical urban design opportunities – like turning waste land around rail stations into high density residential – to transform the way this city lives.
The paper is broader than rail station redevelopment, but I want to focus here because of the principles involved.
Intensifying Melbourne looks at redevelopment scenarios for Reservoir, Sunshine, Surrey Hills and Batman rail stations, all surrounded by large areas of currently unused land with the potential for high density residential. The newly-created high-value land funds undergrounding the rail, overall density increases and congestion falls – a win-win-win.
Intensifying Melbourne is astonishingly honest about the difficulties around change of this magnitude. The sobering realities are nasty and include:
<ul>
<li>Councils are often elected to enforce the anti-development views of residents. Those in well educated, wealthy suburbs often see anything higher than two stories as gross over-development and are formidable opponents.  Governments take them on at their peril.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The cost of trenching is triple that of raising rail lines, and many scenarios result in negative land values – the engineering cost exceeds the land value uplift.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Reservoir and Sunshine are considered highly unattractive residential locations by planners and developers. Developers face above-average risks in realising their investment, relative to other competing opportunities. There is a genuine possibility of failure after government has spent hundreds of millions liberating land over time-frames longer than the four year electoral cycle.</li>
</ul>
I say, the problems and solutions are structural and go deeper that revealed by this analysis.  These calculations are incomplete and overlook key free-carried interests.
Labor identified major, widely dispersed congestion reduction benefits.  Large scale level crossing removal will uplift land values everywhere, as faster travel times shrink distance and cut both time and cost.
The current cultural narrative that all such benefits must accrue to land owners is the barrier.  Intensifying Melbourne sees this: “The way in which urban infrastructure investment creates capital gains and increased economic flows need to be better understood to ensure the capital gains due to public investment can be captured to fund that investment.”
This, of course, goes back to the structure of taxation.  We rely heavily on wage taxes and under-tax land.  Rebalancing this anomaly – an economically damaging imbalance imposed by major land owners on other citizens – would dramatically realign the economy toward productive activity if the beneficiary pays.
Shrinking the distance between say Narre Warren and the CBD brings important efficiencies and would permanently raise land prices along the entire corridor between.  The Victorian government has the tool to ‘value capture’ enough of the uplift to square the equation.  It is called state land tax.  Use it.
David Collyer is policy director of <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" target="_blank">Prosper Australia</a>.
David ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Democrats in the 2013 federal election.
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Could value capture be the key to Melbourne's infrastructure development?

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GUEST OBSERVATION
We usually look at macro economics, yet a micro example of what can go wrong in the property market – very, very wrong – might aid your concentration.
Andrew, a Sydney ‘investor’ bought properties in Mackay and Blackwater Queensland, “when rents were crazy and out look was bright (sic)”.
<a href="https://somersoft.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106133">He posted his entirely credible dilemma</a> on the Somersoft property investor forum.
He paid $495,000 for a Blackwater rental returning $49,400 per annum gross – a hearty 9.9%. Blackwater houses workers at the BMA and Curragh coal mines. With coal prices in the doldrums and layoffs creating plenty of vacancies, agents now value the property at $200,000 and estimate its rental potential at 18,200 per annum gross. The property carries a mortgage of $475,000 at 4.89% interest or $23,200 per annum.
Andrew’s other property in Mackay cost $485,000 for a passing rent of $36,400 per annum, or 7.5%. Now, it is worth $380,000 and market rents are around $10,400 per annum gross. The property carries a mortgage of $450,000 at 4.89% interest or $22,000 per annum.
Violent re-pricing indeed.
Rule of thumb says direct costs, rates, land tax, etc, would be half the gross, certainly on the later rents. So his net rents of around $29,000 support an interest cost of $45,200 per annum, or a net loss of $16,200 per annum, assuming nil vacancies.
Clearly unhappy with his position, Andrew wants out. He faces a loss of $70,000 on the Mackay property and $300,000 on Blackwater if he sells. I suspect these figures disregard stamp duty and other transaction costs.
He says: “I have a house in Sydney that has about $500,000 equity. My mum lives with my family who has contributed into this purchase so selling this property is not an option.”
That equity isn’t his to risk in support of his rental investments. Mum and family would be unimpressed with the idea of selling Baulkham Hills for a Queensland adventure.
“Will this get worse???” he asks plaintively.
His horror story is being repeated all over Queensland and Western Australia. Goaded into action by an army of spruikers in an anecdote-rich, fact-poor media, a naive investor class saw stellar yields and paid a seemingly reasonable capitalization. He thought he won the lottery, when in fact the winner was the vendor.
Little can be done for Andrew and his very hard life lesson.
Yet there is an insight available in what government can do in a volatile land market.
Andrew pays state land tax (SLT) on both Queensland rentals. Valuations are conducted every two years, which softens his liability on the way up but doesn’t retreat nearly quickly enough in a falling market. In an era of wild land price gyrations, government should step up to annual valuations, both to moderate the rise and ease the fall. While this sounds like I am recommending annual revaluation of every parcel of land in the country, it is entirely possible to value half each year and interpolate the rest. SLT already piggy-backs on council valuations, so this is a cost-less exercise.
Land tax is a powerful automatic stabiliser, if we use it properly.
The investor frenzy in Sydney would be less if their bidding up of land prices was immediately transmitted into higher SLT. Dizzy buyers would get a good kicking from existing owners for driving up their costs, rather than the slap on the back for increasing values.
David Collyer is policy director of <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" target="_blank">Prosper Australia</a>.
David ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Democrats in the 2013 federal election.
This article first appeared on Prosper's website.
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Dizzy buying turns to disaster with violent repricing for Queensland investment purchases: David Collyer

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Rents always go up – don’t they? The 1.2 million negatively geared Australian tax payers whose property expenses exceed their rental income think so. Their cunning plan is to patiently wait while the rent ratchet turns their negative cash flows positive and net income losses into profits.
If house prices stabilise at current levels – even if they fall back for a time – overall, wages will continue to grow if only by inflation, pushing up rents. And time is on the land owner’s side.
That’s why it’s called a ratchet. Rentiers make money in their sleep or while striking alpha male poses around the BBQ.
But what if rents don’t rise?
Blasphemy! Yet the historical record shows that is exactly what happens in downturns – and rents can keep falling for years.
My pals, Paul Egan and Philip Soos produced the following chart, of both nominal and real rents Australia 1880-2012.
<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-9199" src="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/australioan-real-rents-1880-2014B-526x300.png" alt="australioan real rents 1880-2014B" width="526" height="300">
After the 1888 boom, rents fell hard and kept falling for eight long years. In WWI, real rents fell again, while wartime inflation maintained at least nominal rental growth and rentiers’ poise. The 1929-33 depression again saw savage cuts with three years of strongly negative rent contraction. WWII was an era of rent controls to keep wages down and protect the war effort. The spike after the election of the second Menzies government and their removal in a housing shortage shows just how effective the controls were. The 1959, 1972 and 1990 recessions are clearly seen, even though rising inflation kept nominal rents rising.
I expect the legions of spruikers and yes-men employed by the FIRE sector to distract citizens from reality will find fault with my skip through the historical record.
A key theme will be that it is the nominal change in rents that matter as borrowings are in nominal dollars, and that the Australian economy is more broadly based now.
OK. Let’s look in nominal terms at Australia’s last recession in 1989-92. I have to acknowledge Australia’s extraordinary 25 years that followed without a technical recession, a world record, but the downturn really hurt residential rents.
<a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/australian-ABS-nominal-rents-1972-2014.png" target="_blank"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-9203" src="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/australian-ABS-nominal-rents-1972-2014-526x300.png" alt="australian ABS nominal rents 1972-2014" width="526" height="300"></a>
The record shows very weak rental growth from 1990 to 2006, under four per cent annually in nominal terms, while inflation consistently tracked near 3%. In fact, aside the three years 2006-09, nominal rents have been quite stodgy since 1990. The weakening trend since 2010 continues to this day.
That is a very very long time between drinks. And remember, the Australian economy was much more diversified then – we weren’t relying on iron ore and coal for export income – we even exported cars.
For every well-chosen well-located rental property that sailed through this era providing solid rent rises to absent owners, another underperformed. Never mind the continual fresh investment to update property facilities and features in a highly competitive market for quality tenants.
Real, after inflation rents 1972-2014 fluctuated around zero.
<a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/australian-real-rents-1972-2014.png"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-9205" src="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/australian-real-rents-1972-2014-526x300.png" alt="australian real rents 1972-2014" width="526" height="300"></a>
This is not the stuff of fortune-building or a secure retirement, let alone making a decent return on investment. We as a nation have gone massively into debt in pursuit of paltry returns. Nuts.
David Collyer is policy director of <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" target="_blank">Prosper Australia</a>.
David ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Democrats in the 2013 federal election.
This article first appeared on Prosper's website.
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The rent ratchet mumble of the BBQ landlords: David Collyer

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GUEST OBSERVATION
New Sydney flats will have to be bigger, <a href="https://www.afr.com/real-estate/residential/ruling-could-make-sydney-apartments-bigger-and-more-expensive-20150414-1mjpmk" target="_blank">the NSW Land and Environment Court ruled last week,</a> overturning long accepted common practice allowing minimum one-bedroom unit sizes at 50 square metres.
Dual-aspect flats must be a minimum 58 square metres and more common single-aspect flats 73.4 square metres.
Property observers have been watching the steady shrinking of highrise flats with some alarm. This isn’t about dizzy planners imposing costs on struggling home buyers, this is about permanent additions to our housing stock and how useful they are.
Highrise reinforced concrete buildings are <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-new-wave-of-skyscrapers-could-survive-100-years-20150318-1m1dmx" target="_blank">very hard if not impossible to change</a>.
The one bedroom flats are mostly being sold to investors who have no intention of living in them. They are the developers’ customers, not the occupants.
In theory, two cramped flats could be amalgamated to make a single spacious one. Sadly the numbers go against this. Putting two $350,000 flats into one worth $600,000 makes no financial sense. The next buyer will simply reverse this and pocket the sacrifice. This is why minimum standards are so important.
Meanwhile, the average size of a <a href="https://www.oliverhume.com.au/news/melbourne-new-apartment-sizes-shrinking-again" target="_blank">new one bedroom flat in Melbourne</a> has fallen to 44 square metres and two bedders to 59 square metre. Smaller flats aren’t cheaper – the savings are simply capitalised into higher land prices on all future developments.
There were moves last year to establish minimum standards in Melbourne, with former Coalition Planning Minister, now Opposition Leader, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/victoria/strict-new-rules-for-highrise-apartments-on-table-20140723-zw4qk">Matthew Guy making encouraging noises</a>, however implausably, but vanished with the election of the Andrews ALP government.
There is a democracy lesson in all this. If the bureaucracy can’t act and the parliament won’t, the judiciary must – which is why the NSW Land and Environment Court ruled on minimum flat sizes.
David Collyer is policy director of <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" target="_blank">Prosper Australia</a>.
David ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Democrats in the 2013 federal election.
This article first appeared on Prosper's website.
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Sydney apartment size ruling a lesson in democracy: David Collyer

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Treasury recently released its <a href="https://bettertax.gov.au/files/2015/03/TWP_combined-online.pdf">submission to the federal Tax White Paper</a>. It has found a tax that actually confers a benefit on Australian citizens. That is, using it actually leaves us better off.
It isn’t a new tax - it is land tax.
Unbiased economists have always known a broad based nil exemption land tax has a marginal excess burden of zero. They have continually urged government to use it ahead of every other conceivable tax instrument available.
The net benefit comes about because foreign and domestic landowners must pay it yet it is spent solely on Australians.
Or, as Treasury describes it:
"Modelling also suggests that broad-based land taxes, such as municipal rates, have a low economic cost (Chart 2.9). This is because land is immobile (unlike other capital) and cannot be moved or varied to avoid tax. The model applies this assumption to both domestic and foreign ownership of land. Land taxes paid by foreign and domestic landowners are only redistributed to the domestic households, providing a benefit to Australian households and generating a negative marginal excess burden for a broad-based land tax shown in the chart."
<a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ScreenHunter_6774-Mar.-30-10.24.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-8881" src="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ScreenHunter_6774-Mar.-30-10.24-494x300.jpg" alt="ScreenHunter_6774-Mar.-30-10.24" width="494" height="300"></a>
There is much unrest at the high and growing level of foreign land ownership in Australia. We have abandoned the settler compact that all political parties once held as sacred: that every Australian citizen, no matter how humble, should enjoy the freedom, independence and privacy of land ownership.
Now, the share going to first home buyers is at historic lows yet there is no let to the foreign investment in Australian property, according to a recent NAB survey:
<a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NAB-foreign-buyers28.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-8880" src="https://www.prosper.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NAB-foreign-buyers28.png" alt="NAB foreign buyers28" width="434" height="274"></a>
I urge a debate on land tax, not because it takes from foreigners – although that is certainly a positive feature – but because we would be richer, more active and freer with it.
If a tax exists with a positive excess burden, we have an obligation to examine its features and shortcomings with a microscope.
The only genuine negative I have ever heard about land tax came from nobel laureate<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yS7Jb58hcsc" target="_blank"> Milton Freidman, who observed</a>: “It’s the only tax left on the books for which people have to write a big cheque.”
David Collyer is policy director of <a href="https://www.prosper.org.au/" target="_blank">Prosper Australia</a>.
David ran as a Senate candidate for the Australian Democrats in the 2013 federal election.
This article first appeared on Prosper's website.
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David Collyer

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