Land value tax - the best of all possible taxes

A land value tax is not just an excellent tax, it is the best tax possible, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But only if it is the only tax in town.

What gives a piece of land its value? Why is a 500 square-foot spot in London worth more than 500 acres of land in Angus? The answer is obviously its location.

The value of a bit of land is not in the land itself, but in the location of that land. And what gives the location value is what is going on around it. Think good transport links, good schools (a house in the UK by a good school is worth anything from 5 to 20% more than one near a bad school), hospitals and the infrastructure to provide jobs.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.