This paper is an effort to pull together a systematic outline of one set of accumulated tax outrages, those bearing on land. I follow press releases, and scholarly and treasury and commission and task force – releases on the subject witha growing impression of incompleteness, of a ..tendqncy to 6ettle on one or two points as the major abuses to be remedied. These make it altogether too easy, and seriously underestimate the diligence and ingenuity of tax-avoiders, who have gone far towards converting the income tax into essentially a payroll tax, and who will not be put squarely in the income tax base with a few simple strokes. Nothing less than a thoroughgoing shakeup of the tax treatrent of land income will avail. And this is exactly the time when such a project, hitherto a pipe dream, may be seriously entertained.
Presentation to Brookings Institution, 1969. To be published in Charles Schultze, Ed, The Role of Incentives in Public Policy.
