Betterment levy and infringement should be taxed on land owners in City Centre

English: Rows of shop in Petaling Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When government spent on road and infrastructure within the town centre, the land value would increase tremendously thus indirectly land owners, who are mostly Chinese, should be taxed with betterment levy.

The benefits from the increase in land value are wiped out by the owners when they sell development units at high value, which for some properties, ballooning to million of Ringgit. The government is losing on two folds, one, the burden of infrastructure cost is spread over to all rakyat, including people in the campaign who do not know nut the Chinese have made money from the government’s work, thus unfairly causing hardship to comparing people at large. Two, the town population is laughing with tons of money for the help of the government but they had voted the opposition party, DAP.

In cases where property falls in value due to the government or the local authority’s bad policy, the landowners on the other hand should be compensated due to the likely lost in the capital value of the bad policy or the infringement to their land.

For example, land owners around Jonker Street or Petaling Street could ask compensation from the state government or the federal government for infringement on the land as the result of road closure. By closing the road, the landowners would lose in drop of land value.

In the case of the federal government the issuance by Tourism Minister to close the Jonker walk from traffic use could be linked as the federal government’s order which would result some 500 or 1,000 land owners losing the capital value of their land due to the infringement on the land owned as the result of the road closure.

The landowners of the surrounding properties around Jonker Street and Petaling Street can sue the government or the Tourism Minister both under land laws and under tort for compensation of losses in their land value and capital value, if we include the infringement compensation.

Both betterment and infringement levies may be useful to reduce property price in the city centre, and is a potential avenue to increase government’s revenue.

After all, the Chinese should now pay for the cost of the government projects that benefit their land in the city centre.

It’s time the government blows back the capital expenditure on infrastructure that beautifies the Chinese and their family homes and businesses in the city by taxing them on the betterment levy. The kampung folks do not directly enjoy the beautification projects and good infrastructure in the city centre, except for a social visit. Thus this burden of cost should always be on the Chinese.

Thus far the opposition is always like to champion the fairness in the society. And this is fairness. As far as I am concerned.