5) Description of housing product/service offering: I have discovered a tax that not only promotes housing but down-taxes it. I have developed over 50 formulas for instituting this tax; no one else has. I have over 238 empirical studies showing that (1) it promotes housing (by down-taxing it), (2) most people pay lower taxes with it (because they get little income from landownership, which is taxed whereas what they produce is not, and (3) governmental revenues are fully maintained (it is, after all, a tax). (3) Most people get tax breaks because of it (because it is the most ability-to-pay major tax there is). ======I can send you a report containing 238 examples of this tax working in the real world, but I have space only for these two: (5) In 1989, Clairton, Pa., an industrial suburb of Pittsburgh, was under direct state fiscal control, officially labeled “financially distressed.” It took the advice of the prestigious Pennsylvania Economy League and started taxing locations more than improvements, taxing land assessments at 10% of assessed value and building assessments at 2.105% of assessed value instead of both at 3.7% of assessed value. During the three-year period after the switch, its taxable building permits were 8.5% more than in the three years before, based on building-permit records in Clairton City Hall. This is to be compared to the 5.8% decline in all U.S. building permits during the same period of time. Latest news just in: the Clairton School District has just greatly increased its land value tax and decreased its property tax on buildings. (10) In 1995, Professor Nicolaus Tideman of Virginia Tech University and his graduate student, Florenz Plassmann (now a professor at the U. of Binghamton) completed a highly technical study of location value taxation in Pennsylvania entitled “A Markov Chain Monte Carlo Analysis of the Effect of Two-Rate Property Taxes on Construction.” It was published in the PEER-REVIEWED Journal of Urban Economics, 3/00, pp. 216-47 & confirmed all my studies.

6) Description of innovation: They raise taxes. Mine brings in governmental revenue.

7) Benefits to clients: It makes their housing more plentiful and less expensive because such housing is not taxed.

8) Key operational partnerships: I am on the Board of the Center for the Study of Economics in Philadelphia and the Center has fully adopted and applied my research and formulas.

9) Financial model: There is no additional cost at all to any govt. that would adopt my proposal. In fact, it would be cheaper than equivalent taxes that govts. are currently levying.

          • Costs as percentage of income: 100

          • Financing: This tax cost nothing more than equivalent taxes (could be less).

10) Effectiveness

          • Project outcomes: This tax (the only good tax) has always been successful - I can email you 238 empirical studies proving this. The clients (taxpayers) number in the thousands.

          • Number of clients in past year: I induced 23 localities in Pennsylvania to adopt my suggested tax, always with successful economic results.

          • Percentage of clients that are poor or marginalized: 30

          • Potential demand: I should think that ALL cities, especially those that are less-developed,would benefit from my studies and experience.

11) Scaling up strategy

          • Stage of the initiative: Mature stage.

          • Expansion plan: Get the tax (remember, it isn't on production) adopted to show how easy it is to implement (but remember, only I literally have the knowledge and experience to implement this tax successfully at first (eventually almost any public official will be able to implement it)

12) Origin of the initiative: My former executive asst. and I are literally the only ones who have implemented this tax (I used to be president of the Center for the Study of Economics; I retired).

Contact Information:
Steven  Cord
retired (but active) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania
I am actively on the Board of the Center for the Study of Economics
(NGO (nonprofit public-service 501c3 organization))
10528 Cross Fox Lane
United States
Tel: 1-410-997-1182
Fax: same
Email: stevencord2000@yahoo.com`
Website: economicboom.info