Ramsey and Pigou: crypto-Georgists
Frank Ramsey was verballed, writes Gavin R. Putland. In 1902, the Congregationalist Cambridge mathematician Arthur Stanley Ramsey married Mary Agnes Wilson, the socialist suffragette daughter of the...
View ArticleState capital-gains tax would enrich property owners
The benefit of a transport route, net of fares or tolls paid for actual use, is shown in prices of access to locations where that benefit is available — in other words, land values. So the...
View ArticleA ‘general formula’ for the price-rent ratio in a rational property market
Pro-speculation tax systems lead to “sub-intrinsic-value bubbles”, says Gavin R. Putland. This page uses MathJax™ to display equations and mathematical symbols. It requires JavaScript™ and an...
View ArticleInvestor-FHB imbalance approaches tipping point?
By Gavin R. Putland On 10 December, the ABS released housing-finance figures for October 2013 (ABS 5609.0). In the following graph, the seasonally-adjusted value of lending for “owner occupation...
View ArticleKavanagh-Putland index bounces on low interest rates
By Gavin R. Putland In the Great Recession — better known in Australia as the Global Financial Crisis (“GFC”) — the recession in any one country was usually preceded by a fall in property prices in...
View ArticleHoward blew his capital
Submitted text of the letter in today's AFR by Gavin R. Putland “Big majorities never last,” writes John Howard (AFR Letters, January 16), “so political capital should be spent on a good cause.” When...
View ArticlePrices, labour taxes and consumption taxes
Letter submitted by Gavin R. Putland to the AFR on January 21, in reply to Greg Angelo The myth that replacing PAYG income tax by GST would raise prices (Greg Angelo, AFR Letters, January 21) is based...
View ArticleFor the record: Putland on negative gearing, CGT and the FHOG, 2003
In the last two years, all Australian states and territories except the NT have decided to reduce or terminate the First Home Owners' Grant for established homes. (The NT pays a premium if the home is...
View ArticleBudget reply: A tax policy for full employment and affordable housing
By Gavin R. Putland To start participating in the economy, you need two things: a job, and a home within commuting distance of the job. The Australian Government (whichever party is in power)...
View ArticleHours worked, balance of trade will hurt GDP
By Gavin R. Putland In the following graph, the black curve shows the quarterly percentage change in the total hours worked (ABS 6202.0, Tab.19), while the yellow curve shows the contribution of the...
View ArticleHow entrenched is negative gearing?
By Gavin R. Putland According to pre-Budget leaks reported by SBS on 3 April, and confirmed by Louis Christopher on 9 April, Treasury and the Parliamentary Budget Office have modelled a proposal to...
View ArticleHousing: Are we maxed out again?
By Gavin R. Putland The ABS Eight Capital Cities house-price index for the June quarter of 2014 was released today (12 August). The index has been scaled to per-capita GDP and plotted in red (top...
View ArticleKavanagh-Putland index rises on Sydney investment binge
By Gavin R. Putland Last year's release of the ‘Kavanagh-Putland index’ showed that the ratio of property sales to GDP was slightly higher in 2012-13 than in 2011-12. The RBA lowered the cash rate by...
View ArticleDo God-botherers lift residential property values?
By Gavin R. Putland.* Suppose that a certain facility, e.g. a childcare centre or a church, would take up a small percentage, say x percent by value, of the usable land in a greenfield residential...
View ArticleReply to Henry Ergas on negative gearing
Nothing to do with raising or minimizing taxes, says Gavin R. Putland. Until a few weeks ago, the defenders of negative gearing (NG) preferred not to mention the possibility of limiting it to new...
View ArticleHousing investors party on like it's 2003
By Gavin R. Putland Yesterday (12 May), the ABS released housing-finance figures for March 2015 (ABS 5609.0). In the following graph, the seasonally-adjusted value of lending for “owner occupation...
View ArticleSquaring the circle: The contradictory arguments against limiting negative...
By Gavin R. Putland Of all the proposed reforms to negative gearing, the one with the best chance of being supported by a major political party — hence the best chance of getting through Parliament —...
View ArticleHow the Hawke-Keating government missed the boat on negative gearing
By Gavin R. Putland The McKell Institute's report on negative gearing (Richard Holden, Switching Gears, June 2015) concluded that negative gearing for future investors should be allowed only for new...
View ArticleA ‘capital gain’ is a private tax
The noisiest campaigners for lower taxes complain only about public taxes while ignoring or defending the unrequited tributes collected by private agents under the guise of market transactions. The...
View ArticleSinodinos takes new page from negative-gearing playbook
By Gavin R. Putland Ever since full deductibility of negative gearing was reinstated in 1987, successive federal governments have pretended that the best way to help tenants is to give tax concessions...
View ArticleCould a 137-year-old equation explain the financial collapse?
By Bryan Kavanagh The Australian Federal Treasury publication “Architecture of Australia's tax and transfer system” (August 2008) made a valid observation: While there are at least a hundred taxes,...
View ArticleWhether limiting negative gearing to new homes would raise rents
By Gavin R. Putland For the first time that this writer can remember, a major political party is going into a federal election with a policy which, on its face, is designed to reduce the rate of...
View ArticleREIA contradicts itself on negative-gearing policy
By Gavin R. Putland Further to my post of 21 May, I note that the Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) is now making two contradictory claims on Labor's negative-gearing policy. On the one hand,...
View ArticleSQM Research contradicts itself on Labor's negative-gearing policy
By Gavin R. Putland The formerly respected SQM Research, in its report called “Labor's Negative Gearing Policy — A Market Viewpoint” (22 June 2016), has joined the conga line claiming that requiring...
View ArticleWhy might rents rise under Labor?
By Gavin R. Putland The proper function of the property industry is to keep the productive economy housed as cheaply as possible, so that investment in future production is not crowded out by the cost...
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