On 7th July Rt Hon Vincent Cable, chief economic spokesperson for the Liberal Democrat Party gave the annual lecture to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Dr. Cable gave an insightful review of the current economic situation. Amongst his proposals for counter-cyclical measures was a transfer of business rates from property to land

"In principle it should also be possible to apply property taxes in a countercyclical manner. Stamp duty already operates counter cyclically since falling house prices lead to lower duty paid and lower rates. However, unfortunately, Britain does not have a national tax based on current property values, of the kind operating in Denmark, based on annual revaluations. One useful counter cyclical measure would be to shift the tax base of business rates to land values – including unused land – increasing the cost of holding land banks in booms but easing the burden in slumps which are transmitted to land prices."

For full text see   http://www.ifs.org.uk/docs/vincent_cable.pdf