Land Tax And Land Bank Needed: Thailand Development Research Institute

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Land tax and land bank needed: TDRI

Attapoom Ongkulna

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The People's Movement for a Just Society (P-Move) seminar yesterday urged legal amendments to ensure fair distribution of land ownership and raised concern over foreign investors using legal loopholes to buy and sell plots for profit.

Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI) president Nipon Poapongsakorn said long-standing land problems - like encroachment on state land and officials taking back land which people had lived on for a long time - remained unresolved.

He said there was a lack of government measures to limit large-scale land speculation, while civil service agencies didn't protect people's rights and only used laws to determine land-ownership rights. Hence, 435 people had been charged and 1,000 people prosecuted due to the lack of laws to back their rights.

The House tried to pass a law allowing people to make use of state-owned or privately owned land that wasn't in use, but the change in government had stalled that attempt, Nipon said.

The community land-title deed project pushed by the previous government had become merely a PM's Office regulation applied on a case-by-case basis.

Nipon urged a continuous push of the "land bank" policy, saying a land tax law should serve as the main mechanism so that landlords who leave land unused would lose it to the land bank. He said the policy should also ensure a fair land market: poor people could get access to land and choose to buy it at an appropriate price.

Law Reform Committee member Pairoj Polpetch said the land-ownership issue could not be considered only by looking at title deeds, as it involved other factors including natural resources, environment and communities, and shouldn't be based on the principle that anyone with high economic status can own land.

It should be based on land-ownership distribution, creation of land use and control of land use, or else land would only be owned by a small group of people. And foreign investors could profit from Thai land, because land-ownership was governed by money, he said.

Pairoj said violations of human rights and environmental protection were a more important context than the criminal code; justice procedures shouldn't consider them in the same way.

He said many other facts must be taken into consideration rather than just asking for a land-title deed - or else various facts and true justice would be overlooked.

Investigators, public prosecutors and justice personnel must be neutral, and adjust their views so they were in line with the current situation and abandon the old belief that the only determinant of proper land ownership was to have a land-title deed.

The seminar also discussed a case of Lamphun residents charged with land encroachment, in which the local court will read its verdict on June 6.

-- The Nation 2012-05-29

[OzMick]

" Communism is like prohibition, it's a good idea but it won't work." Will Rogers

You can add this lot, although it's probably included in communism.

[Pib]

Nipon urged a continuous push of the "land bank" policy, saying a land tax law should serve as the main mechanism so that landlords who leave land unused would lose it to the land bank. He said the policy should also ensure a fair land market: poor people could get access to land and choose to buy it at an appropriate price.

A socialist- type answer: let's tax it or give it to the less fortunate. It just don't pay anymore to be rich.

Edited May 29, 2012 by Pib

[Thai at Heart]

Well, if there is one national asset that is available for taxation, it is land.

Never going to happen, but if they can tax cars at the ridiculous level that they do as an effective way of getting the rich to pay some of their share, I realistically don't see why they shouldn't tax land which is concentrated into the hands of a very small percentage of the population.

[OzMick]

Well, if there is one national asset that is available for taxation, it is land.

Never going to happen, but if they can tax cars at the ridiculous level that they do as an effective way of getting the rich to pay some of their share, I realistically don't see why they shouldn't tax land which is concentrated into the hands of a very small percentage of the population.

Taxing land isn't our problem, we can't own any, and a reasonable way to raise revenue. But confiscating unused land?

Somchai is working in BKK, buys a block to build his retirement home in his village, goes home once a year, maybe plants a tree. After 10 or 15 years he pays it off and some commie wants to confiscate it because he hasn't worked it?

[belg]

here we go again, blame it all on the farang that cannot even own his own house or own company...

what about thai businesess investing in other countries like cambodia / myanmar? anything possible there with 100% ownership

why not publicly notify everybody who owns how much land in this country ? people will be shocked to see so much thai chinese elite of bangkok or superrich millers and middle man that gets away with the sweat and profits of the farmers