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Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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9<br />

Other objectors to land value taxation are those who are married to the<br />

concept of higher income taxes and can’t rethink the issue. They advocate taxes that<br />

treat the symptoms but not the cause of inequity, including a wealth tax, an<br />

inheritance tax or a capital gains tax.<br />

Other Resource RentalsTaxes<br />

Ecological tax reform is a simple idea: shift taxes off work and enterprise, and put<br />

it onto waste, pollution and scarce resources. Those who waste and those who<br />

pollute pay more. Clean businesses pay less and everyone pays less income tax.<br />

Such an idea is common sense if we want a sustainable economy, and it’s<br />

happening now in many European countries. For example, there has been a water<br />

pollution tax in the Netherlands and France, a toxic waste tax in Germany, a waste<br />

charge in Denmark, a carbon dioxide tax in Norway, Sweden, Finland and<br />

Demnark, and nitrous oxide and nitric oxide taxes in Sweden. In addition, there<br />

have been taxes on resources – for example, on heating oil, diesel and gas in<br />

Germany, and on sulphur in Sweden.<br />

In New Zealand, the Green Party put in a very comprehensive 82­page<br />

submission to the New Zealand 2001 Tax Review in which they argued that it is<br />

time to change the system from taxing labour to taxing resources and polluting<br />

activities. Furthermore, they argued that the imposition of a tax on any activity will<br />

tend to reduce the scale of that activity.<br />

In Auckland,

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