A single tax is a system of taxation based mainly or exclusively on one tax, typically chosen for its special properties, often being a tax on land value. Pierre Le Pesant, sieur de Boisguilbert and Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban were early advocates for a single tax, but, rejecting the claim that

land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...

has certain economic properties which make it uniquely suitable for taxation, they instead proposed a

flat tax A flat tax (short for flat-rate tax) is a tax with a single rate on the taxable amount, after accounting for any deductions or exemptions from the tax base. It is not necessarily a fully proportional tax. Implementations are often progressi ...

on all incomes. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a populist single tax movement emerged which also sought to levy a single tax on the rental value of land and natural resources, but for somewhat different reasons. This "Single Tax" movement later became known as Georgism, after its most famous proponent,

Henry George Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American political economist, Social philosophy, social philosopher and journalist. His writing was immensely popular in 19th-century America and sparked several reform movements of ...

. It proposed a simplified and equitable tax system that upholds natural rights and whose revenue is based exclusively on ground and

natural resource Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest, and cultural value. ...

rents, with no additional taxation of improvements such as buildings. Some libertarians advocate land

value capture Value capture is a type of public financing that recovers some or all of the value that public infrastructure generates for private landowners. In many countries, the public sector is responsible for the infrastructure required to support urban dev ...

as a consistently

ethical Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied e ...

and non-distortionary means to fund the essential operations of government, the surplus rent being distributed as a type of guaranteed

basic income Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to perform Work (hu ...

, traditionally called the

citizen's dividend Citizen's dividend is a proposed policy based upon the Georgist principle that the natural world is the Commons, common property of all people. It is proposed that all citizens receive regular payments (dividends) from revenue raised by leasin ...

, to compensate those members of society who by legal title have been deprived of an equal share of the earth's spatial value and equal access to natural opportunities (see '' geolibertarianism''). Related taxes derived in principle from the land value tax include

Pigouvian tax A Pigouvian tax (also spelled Pigovian tax) is a tax on any Market (economics), market activity that generates negative externalities (i.e., external costs incurred by third parties that are not included in the market price). It is a method that ...

es to internalize the external costs of pollution more efficiently than litigation, as well as severance taxes on raw material extraction to regulate the depletion of unreplenishable natural resources and to prevent irreparable damage to valuable ecosystems through unsustainable practices such as

overfishing Overfishing is the removal of a species of fish (i.e. fishing) from a body of water at a rate greater than that the species can replenish its population naturally (i.e. the overexploitation of the fishery's existing Fish stocks, fish stock), resu ...

. There have been other proposals for a single tax concerning property, goods, or income. Others have made proposals for a single tax based on other revenue models, such as the

FairTax FairTax is a flat tax, fixed rate sales tax proposal introduced as bill H.R. 25 in the United States Congress every year since 2005. The ''Fair Tax Act'' calls for elimination of the Internal Revenue Service and repeal the Sixteenth Amendment ...

proposal for a

consumption tax A consumption tax is a tax levied on consumption spending on goods and services. The tax base of such a tax is the money spent on Consumption (economics), consumption. Consumption taxes are usually indirect, such as a sales tax or a value-added ta ...

and various

proposals on personal incomes."Calls for single 30% income tax rate"
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References

{{Reflist Property taxes Economic ideologies Tax reform Georgism Land value taxation

See also

References