"Land Value Tax is efficient because the tax reduces the price of land but does not affect how it is used, or how much is used."
– Dr. Ken Henry, Treasury Secretary, Australian Gov. (2001-2011), author, Taxation reform and fiscal federalism - Implications of Australia's Future Tax System, 2009

2010
A turning point for 'moving forward' together:
- "Australia's Future Tax System"
Treasury Department Review, Final Report, 2 May 2010

"Stronger, fairer, simpler: a tax plan for our future"
- Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, MP, 2 May 2010 [pdf]

Background
- Australia was Federated in 1901:
The Australian Taxation Office was launched in 1910 on the Land Tax System; Income taxes were introduced to fund WWI.
(See detailed historical timeline references under Australian Tax System.)

- In May 2007, Australian Taxation Office Land Valuer Bryan Kavanagh published the results of his study on the long-term effects of property bubbles:
Unlocking the Riches of Oz: A Case Study of the Social and Economic Costs of Australian Real Estate Bubbles, 1972-2006 (2007). Download the report (pdf).

- Following the August 2007 stock market crash which led to the 2008 GFC, in November 2007, Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd was elected Prime Minister of Australia.

On 3 December 2007, Kevin Rudd was sworn in as the 26th prime minister of Australia: Prime Minister Rudd's first 'directive' to Australian Treasury Secretary,
Dr. Ken Henry, led to the tax policy review: Australia's future tax system (2010).

“One reason why fiscal federalism is so important to this review is that, notwithstanding the fact that the well-being of taxpayers is affected by the entire federation's tax-transfer system, past tax reviews tended to focus on improving the taxes only of the government that commissioned the review.” - Dr. Henry's 19 August, 2009 speech, Taxation reform and fiscal federalism - Implications of Australia's Future Tax System Review

Dr. Henry's review confirmed the original intention of Australia's Founding Fathers following Federation in 1901 with the 1910 launch of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO): Collection of Economic Rent is the only efficient sovereign solution to detrimental effects of speculative real estate 'Boom-Bust cycles' and complicated tax avoidance schemes.

40 year projection
Australia's future tax system:
Parliament of Australia, Library Section Briefing, 2010

"As stated in the Report’s preface, the Review took a long-term perspective and intended the Report to be a guide for reform of the tax and transfer system in Australia to meet the challenges from the economic, social and environmental changes envisaged over the next 40 years. The 138 recommendations made in the report are therefore intended to be viewed in the medium to long-term perspective and not in the short-term context of a three-year Parliament." – Bernard Pulle, 2010, Senior Research Specialist at Parliament of Australia

Australia's Future Tax System, 2010
Excerpt:
The Australian Treasury Department tax review Australia's Future Tax System (2010), aka The Henry Review:

Henry Review Recommendations (Treasury 2010b)
C2 — Land tax and conveyance stamp duty

Recommendation 51: Ideally, there would be no role for any stamp duties, including conveyancing stamp duties, in a modern Australian tax system. Recognising the revenue needs of the States, the removal of stamp duty should be achieved through a switch to more efficient taxes, such as those levied on broad consumption or land bases. Increasing land tax at the same time as reducing stamp duty has the additional benefit of some offsetting impacts on asset prices.

Recommendation 52: Given the efficiency benefits of a broad land tax, it should be levied on as broad a base as possible. In order to tax more valuable land at higher rates, consideration should be given to levying land tax using an increasing marginal rate schedule, with the lowest rate being zero, with thresholds determined by the per-square-metre value.

Recommendation 53: In the long run, the land tax base should be broadened to eventually include all land. If this occurs, low-value land, such as most agricultural land, would not face a land tax liability where its value per square metre is below the lowest rate threshold.

Recommendation 54: There are a number of incremental reforms that could potentially improve the operation of land tax, including: a. ensuring that land tax applies per land holding, not on an entity's total holding, in order to promote investment in land development; b. eliminating stamp duties on commercial and industrial properties in return for a broad land tax on those properties; and c. investigating various transitional arrangements necessary to achieve a broader land tax.

(See detailed historical timeline references under Australian Tax System.)

Housing is a cost of living to wage earners
"Land only has a value (price) because the full economic rent is not being collected. The more economic rent (or land tax) that is collected the lower the price of the land. If the whole economic rent is collected the price of the land would be zero."
– Raymond Makewell, The Science of Economics (2013)

"To understand the mechanism that drove the global economy into depression, substitute 'land' for 'housing'. All the analyses refer to housing crises around the world, and the related financial symptoms like the sub-prime mortgage racket. But these terms are intended to disguise the site of the problem – the way in which we make money out of land without adding value to the wealth of our nations."
– Fred Harrison

"The management of the modern economy by the affluent for the affluent will fail."
– John Kenneth Galbraith

Excerpts from Part 4: A Short History of Economics
. . .
Confucius of Europe
Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) became known as “the Confucius of Europe” during his lifetime. Professor Wei-Bin Zhang quotes Maverick (1938) in Confucianism and Modernisation (2000),

The influence of the Chinese upon the physiocrats was probably more extensive and more significant than has generally been appreciated. If one will but look into the matter, he can readily discern similarities in thought on the part of Chinese sages and French économistes…. This similarity is more than mere coincidence; it is due to an actual borrowing on the part of the physiocrats. (Zhang, 2000, p. 195)

Two essential overviews:
– Judith A. Berling, 1976, Confucianism - an essay on neo-Confucianism.
– Professor Derk Bodde, 2005, Chinese Ideas in the West, (pdf): Overview of the role Confucian philosophy played in sustaining China's imperial status-quo.

Informed by China's 4000-year history of taxing land.
Centuries of turmoil brought France to the verge of bankruptcy.
Injustice and corruption were widespread. The need to prevent anarchy and maintain social order led to new ideas in political economy, out of which emerged the "économistes": A new school of economic thought launched the first strictly scientific system of economics, preceding the Classical Political Economists in acknowledging the importance of "Land" in terms of economic significance.

Recognising France as primarily an agricultural economy, the "économistes" modelled their 'solutions' on laws of nature, which led P. S. DuPont de Nemours to coin the term
"Physiocrats" – from the Greek, rule of Nature.

The school was dominated by Royal physician and economist Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) and economist and statesman Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), later joined by economist Jacques Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay (1712-1759) and writer, economist and government official Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) who supported the revolution and advocated for genuinely free trade, and an end to feudalism: "Physiocrats called for the abolition of all existing taxes, completely free trade and a single tax on land."
– Fonseca, Gonçalo L., (2009), "The Physiocrats" (Archived)

... there arose in France a school of philosophers and patriots– Quesnay, Turgot, Condorcet, Dupont– the most illustrious men of their time, who advocated, as the cure for all social ills, the "impot unique", the "single tax". – Henry George, 1890, Justice the Object- Taxation the Means

In 1758, Francois Quesnay wrote "Tableau Oeconomique" documenting the Physiocrats' precept: "that the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development."

The first English translation was in 1766 described as;
THE OECONOMICAL TABLE - An Attempt Towards Ascertaining and Exhibiting the Source, Progress, and Employment of Riches, with Explanations, by the friend of Mankind, the celebrated MARQUIS de MIRABEAU
Using the paradigm of an agricultural society, the Tableau traces the flow of production in a closed system. The unfortunate references to the barren (or sterile) advances for manufacturing or commerce were later used to discredit the analysis. But whether from a misapprehension over the peculiar terminology employed or a fundamental error of the school, the profound truths of the Physiocrats have been generally ignored. Still, Adam Smith who recognized the contribution of manufacturing and commerce had this to say of the Physiocrats in his An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations

This system, however, with all its imperfections, is, perhaps, the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published upon the subject of political economy, and is upon that account well worth the consideration of every man who wishes to examine with attention the principles of that very important science. >>>more: University of New York/ Buffalo

The Wealth of Nations
Scottish social philosopher and political economist,
Professor Adam Smith (1723-1790), the reputed founder of Classical Political Economics, visited the Physiocrats in France while touring across Europe (1764-1766) as tutor to the young Scottish nobleman Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. Smith was influenced by the Physiocrats' economic theorem: "the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development."

Ten years later, Classical Political Economics theorem was formally launched with the publication of Adam Smith's
The Wealth of Nations (1776).

"The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the [tenant] can afford to give."
– Adam Smith, 1776, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 11, Of the Rent of Land

Note: Download Free copy (pdf) of Eamonn Butler, 2011, The Condensed ‘Wealth of Nations’ from The Adam Smith Institute

Progress and Poverty (1879)
by Henry George (1839–1897)
Read Progress and Poverty HERE
Excerpts

Production and consumption are only relative terms.
Speaking absolutely, people neither produce nor consume.
They cannot exhaust or lessen the powers of nature.

If the whole human race were to work forever, they could not make the Earth one atom heavier or lighter. Nor could they augment or diminish the forces that produce all motion and sustain all life.

Water taken from the ocean must eventually return to the ocean.
So too, the food we take from nature is, from the moment we take it, on its way back to those same reservoirs. What we draw from a limited extent of land may temporarily reduce the productiveness of that land. But the return will go to other land.

Life does not use up the forces that maintain life.
We come into the material universe bringing nothing; we take nothing away when we depart. The human being, in physical terms, is just a transitory form of matter, a changing mode of motion. From this, it follows that the limit to population can be only the limit of space — that the human race may not increase its numbers beyond the possibility of finding elbow room. Remote and shadowy as it is, this possibility is what makes Malthus' theory appear self-evident.

But there is still another difference:
Humans are the only animals whose desires increase as they are fed — the only animal that is never satisfied. The wants of every other living thing are fixed. The ox of today aspires to no more than the ox that humans first yoked. The only use they can make of additional supplies, or additional opportunities, is to multiply.

But not so humans. No sooner are our animal wants satisfied than new wants arise. The beast never goes further, but humans have just set their foot on the first step of an infinite progression.

Once the demand for quantity is satisfied, we seek quality.
As human power to gratify our wants increases, our aspirations grow. At the lower levels of desire, we seek merely to satisfy our senses. Moving to higher forms of desire, humans awaken to other things.

We brave the desert and the polar sea, but not for food;
we want to know how the earth was formed and how life arose. We toil to satisfy a hunger no animal has felt, a thirst no beast can know.

Given more food and better conditions, animals and vegetables can only multiply — but humans will develop. In the one case, the expansive force can only extend in greater numbers. In the other, it will tend to extend existence into higher forms and wider powers.
– Progress and Poverty, 1879