SINGLE TAX. The name given by Henry George, the American economist, to the doctrine of levying a tax upon rent alone as the sole necessary instrument of taxation. Land, he held, is the true source of wealth, and therefore the only proper revenue of a state is that derived from the appropriation of rent. The doc trine is one with that of the Physiocrats, the school of French economists founded by Quesnay (1694-1774)- The "impOt unique" of Quesnay was proposed in days when the produce of the soil constituted by far the greater part of any nation's wealth. Henry George wrote his Progress and Poverty in 1879, when al ready the arts of industry were playing a dominating part in wealth production, and when capital was accumulating in great aggregations. Nevertheless, he believed that profits and industry should remain untaxed. He went further, and appeared to be lieve that, under a single tax system, all economic problems would be solved.
The essence of the single tax theory may be given in Henry George's own words, taken from his book, The Condition of Labour, written in 1891 : "We have no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden of labour; we look on interest itself as natural and just; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the poor; we see no evil in competition, but deem unrestricted com petition to be as necessary to the health of the industrial and so cial organism as the free circulation of the blood is to the health of the bodily organism—to be the agency whereby the fullest co operation is to be secured. We would simply take for the com munity the value that attaches to land by the growth of the com munity; leave sacredly to the individual all that belongs to the individual; and, treating necessary monopolies as functions of the State, abolish all restrictions and prohibitions save those required for public health, safety, morals, and convenience."
This declaration is the more striking because it was written in answer to a Papal Encyclical on the labour question, which advo cated the protection of labour and especially the labour of women and children. The single tax, Henry George thought, would make all, or nearly all, industrial legislation unnecessary.
The fundamental doctrine underlying the proposal was that all men are equally entitled to the use of the land. As, however, the management of the land by the State was impossible in practice, and as it was also impossible to divide it up into equal parcels, or into parcels of equal productivity, the road to justice was to leave the land in private ownership, and to appropriate the "economic rent," thus leaving to the owners the value of their own improve ments. Collecting the economic rent as a social surplus by the single tax, the community as a whole would receive justice while individual enterprise would not be fettered. Universal free trade and free competition were thus postulated as parts of the doc trine. Private property was to be sacred as never before, for it was to go scot free of all taxation. The millionaire manufacturer was to pay no more in taxes than his poorest clerk.
It was thus implied that the yield of the single tax would be sufficient to meet the expenses of government. This might easily be so in an agricultural community, but in Great Britain in 1928 the entire economic rent of the land in town and country would not defray more than a small fraction—perhaps one-eighth—of the expenses of the central and local governments.
(See GEORGE, HENRY ; PHYSIOCRATIC SCHOOL ; ECONOMICS ; RENT ; FINANCE.)