single tax, any levy that serves as the government's only source of revenue. Generally, however, it is understood to mean a tax derived from economic rent rent, in law, periodic payment by a tenant for the use of another's property. In economics, its meaning is more complex, but since the word rent means any income or yield from an object capable of producing wealth, its limitation to a more special sense is
..... Click the link for more information. and used as the sole source of public receipts. As such, it is based on the doctrine that land and the natural resources are the source of all wealth, and it corresponds substantially to the impôt unique of the 18th-century physiocrats physiocrats (fĭz`ēəkrăts'), school of French thinkers in the 18th cent. who evolved the first complete system of economics.
..... Click the link for more information. . Basic to the theory is the belief that the land and its wealth belong to all. The most effective advocate of the single tax was Henry George George, Henry, 1839–97, American economist, founder of the single tax movement, b. Philadelphia. Of a poor family, his formal education was cut short at 14, and in 1857 he emigrated to California; there he worked at various occupations before turning to
..... Click the link for more information. , who held that economic rent tends to enrich the owner at the expense of the community and is thus the cause of poverty; he believed that by appropriating all (or nearly all) economic rent governments could wipe out social distress and even acquire a surplus without recourse to any other taxes. George's theories have had some influence on land taxation in Britain, several of the former dominions, the W United States, and several European nations.

Bibliography

See H. George, Progress and Poverty (1879).

single tax

Tax on land values intended as the sole source of government revenues, replacing all existing taxes. Henry George proposed the single tax in his book Progress and Poverty (1879). The plan gained considerable support in subsequent decades but was never implemented. Advocates argued that since land is a fixed resource, the income it yields is a product of the economy's growth and not individual effort, and that it therefore can fairly be taxed to support the government. Critics protested that the single tax would take no account of an individual's ability to pay, since there is no correlation between land ownership and total wealth or income.