At this point, we should hop across the world and look at Canberra. In 2012 they began a 20-year switch from stamp duty towards land taxation. There was no market crash - and the tax isn't even visible if you eyeball the data.

Perhaps you think I'm being too ambitious, and we shouldn't replace Council Tax. Just replace stamp duty. But if you do that, then - unless you're about to buy a house - almost everybody loses in simple cash terms. Doesn't seem realistic.

Their home might go up in value 68%. Yay! Yay? Now it's a game of pass the parcel. Whoever is lucky enough to hold land at that point (perhaps a landlord) gets a windfall. What will this do to affordability and inequality in Blackpool?

But we should talk more about the winners. People in modest houses in Blackpool will stop paying council tax and have a land value tax bill of £1.

That is going to impact house prices. Exactly how much is a v difficult and uncertain question. Our report goes into detail on this, but the model can show a simple/dumb estimate. A 30%+ fall is a big deal. Negative equity. Problems for lenders. Developers go bust...

I wonder what that does to some of the most expensive properties in the country? Wow. £63k/year in Knightsbridge. £34k/year in Trafford.

Small problem. The deferral and transition mean in the short term we need a higher rate if we want to replace council tax and stamp duty. 1.46%

But that delightful grandma rattling around in a huge mansion flat in Westminster has to find £44k/year. OK, easy. We'll let her defer until she sells (or, let's be blunt, dies).

Someone who just bought a £520k flat in Islington paid £16k stamp duty. They now also pay £5k LVT per year instead of £2k council tax. I'm not certain they'll regard that as a great deal

Oh, you're still here? Ok, we can look at the detail. Blimey, the distribution looks quite extreme:

If you go to our linked report/model, you'll see this is what happens if you replace council tax and stamp duty with a 1.28% land value tax. 69% of households benefit in cash terms. Everyone benefits from abolition of stamp duty and boost to growth. This is easy! We're done!

And critically, we must tax land and not property. If we tax property, we punish development. If we tax land, we create an incentive to develop and improve land. Milton Friedman said taxing land was the "least bad tax". He was right.

Abolishing existing land taxes is not the answer. Whatever your politics and view of the size of the State, you should want less tax on income & more tax on land. It's more efficient & drives growth. The Resolution Foundation & the Adam Smith Institute cannot both be wrong.

We tax property a lot in the UK, more than any other developed country, but we tax it really badly.

Stamp duty and council tax are terrible taxes. Land value tax could replace both - and Andy Burnham has backed it for 16 years. Who wins? Who loses? What happens to house prices? LVT could drive growth. But it isn’t easy. Our model shows its promise - and its problems.

Andy Burnham's backed a land value tax for 16 years. This Sunday we'll be publishing an analysis of how an LVT would work in practice. Plus a model that lets you design an LVT and answer the key questions: Who'd win? Who'd lose? And the big question: can it be done at all?

I did get something interesting out of it. Stevenson often says he's made millions by betting that inequality would get worse. I asked him what these trades were (it's not obvious how you'd place that bet) The answer: he bet on asset prices rising.

I am *not* an expert in equality. But I sense it's all much more nuanced than Stevenson's videos suggest. I worry a lot about the inability of young people to buy houses. That's very little to do with billionaires. This is excellent: buff.ly/ZnLxxgn

I don't usually write personal stuff, but a few words about my experience of being interviewed by Gary Stevenson. It started with a nice chat, comparing taste in hoodies... then the tone changed. He demanded to know why I'd deleted a tweet criticising him.

The modelling does, however, appear to be completely static, taking no account of taxpayer behavioural responses. The word "elasticity" is absent. Possibly I've missed their treatment of this, but otherwise it looks like a bad error.

Linked to this, they propose taxing gifts. This would be a revolutionary change, with very significant political and technical consequences, but it is only dealt with by the use of the word "gift" in this paragraph. Not mentioned again.

There's a v large inheritance tax increase. Recipients will pay rather than estates, but there will be no exemptions. No nil rate band. So revenues go up 10x. If one spouse dies, in most cases the other would have to sell their house to pay the tax. Doesn't feel fair.

The authors sent me this chart showing how their proposed marginal rate compares with the existing marginal rate. It looks pretty sensible. But it doesn't look like a tax increase, and I don't understand how it raises many billions of pounds.

The authors were kind enough to spend time corresponding with me. It seems the biggest revenue raiser is that their income tax replacement:

Lots of people asking me about the Prosperity 2030 proposal to reform tax and raise £100bn/year. I love seeing ambitious tax reform proposals, but I struggle to understand this one. The document is very hard to follow (possibly because of the use of AI?)

tbh, am a bit disappointed that Count Binface's tax policies are the same as every other party.

And an interactive map showing "mansion tax" properties by postcode (anonymised):

We've a full analysis with a regional/constituency breakdown:

Last year's Budget introduced a “mansion tax” - an annual charge on homes worth £2m or more. The Mail on Sunday reported that Andy Burnham may lower the threshold to £1.5m. We've looked at how that could work, what it would raise, and which parts of the UK would pay the most.

So we'd have to try and renegotiate all our tax treaties. There are 130. This would take a while. Some countries would resist any amendment because they'd rather attract British expats. Others have procedures that make treaty amendments take years.