Land Taxation Research Paper

Different countries implement property taxation differently to suite their objectives. Some countries will tax land and improvements while others will only tax land. Table 1 and 2 above shows this phenomenon.

Childress, Hasen, Solomon & van den Brink, is of the notion that, “land tax as a policy instrument for land redistribution has a mixed reaction in terms of success in different countries around the world. In Brazil the policy had little success and similar policies in the Caribbean in places such as St. Lucia and Jamaica had mixed result. They however concluded that there is a need for more research to test whether land tax is the right instrument for land distribution.” There are a number of reasons attributed to why some countries implement

7.3.1.9 Land tax to manage political tensions around land.

“International evidence clearly demonstrates that taxation systems are most efficient when imposition of the tax and expenditure of the revenues gathered are done at the same level of government. This also boosts tax morale because the benefits provided by the collected revenue will be within the community being taxed” Binswanger-Mkhize, et al (p. 326, 2009). In Namibia for instance property tax is levied by municipalities because it funds local governments, and land tax on commercial agricultural land is levied at national level as it funds interests of the nation.

3.1 Land tax in South Africa

Before independence the South African municipal governments were imposing the agricultural land tax differently. “Some were taxing it and some were not, taxed land also had a highly regressive tax system under which the first hectare was taxed 100 times more than the 20th hectare” (Binswanger-Mkhize, Bourguignon and van den Brick (p. 325, 2009)). After independence the 1994 constitution confirmed the right of municipalities in South Africa to tax

This commission came up with some recommendations which are contrary to the 2005 National Land Summit, when discussing the implications of land tax the commission recommended that; (a) a national land tax that has its primary target the taxation of agricultural land was not viable option for South Africa and (b) the weight of the evidence from South Africa and abroad showed that a land tax would have at best negligible effect on a land reform