St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist: Time for Land Value Tax?
Like Philadelphia, St. Louis has a wage tax blamed for job loss and commercial exodus. Unlike Philadelphia, St. Louis is an isolated pocket in a generally declining part of the nation, losing as much if not more wealth and population to the Sun Belt than even Philadelphia, Hartford or Albany.
David Nicklaus
The Saint Louis earnings tax has been blamed for at least part of the decline of St. Louis, Missouri once a great economic, cultural and population center. Now, like in Kansas City the drumbeat against the earnings tax is reaching a crescendo. David Nicklaus of the Post-Dispatch has engendered some passionate discussion about replacing the earnings tax with a land value tax.
As our Philadelphia 2009 Budget Gap Study showed, the land value tax is a preferable and positive way to plug budget deficits, in place of earnings, sales or business taxes (or traditional property taxes).
