Weekend Yachtsman left a comment on "Most people think Magna Carta is a document about..."
Not sure I agree with this bit:
"further large chunks in privately collected taxes (rent or mortgage interest)"
Tax is money you have to hand over and get nothing in return, or nothing you've really a right to believe in or expect.
Rent or mortgage payments are voluntarily entered into and you definitely get something from them - the right to occupy a tenanted property or - eventually - ownership of the mortgaged property. Voluntary is the key difference.
You can't really compare them imho.
All right then, things like income tax, Employer's NIC and VAT are definitely taxes because the payer gets nothing in return. In which case Land Value Tax is not a tax, because you do get something in return and it is voluntary. It's like rent (in fact, it is rent, it's ground rent). But "rents" are a privately collected tax if the land "owner" is just collecting or consuming the rent without paying the nation's share (the location rent) back to the nation. Think about it logically: if a tax payment is a payment forced upon you by the government for nothing in return, then you can look at it from the point of view of the recipient. If the government arranges things so that some people receive or enjoy national wealth for no payment (for nothing in return), then those people are tax collectors or welfare claimants or both.
