Dr. Tom McDonnell:

Yes. Essentially, commercial rates are a residual at the moment. They are basically used to fill the gap because we are not willing to increase the local property tax. To provide services, we increase commercial rates. Often, businesses do not find out what their rates are until quite late in the day. It is an extremely non-transparent system.

While moving to taxing the land itself might seem to be taxing the landlord, the tax would in many cases fall on the business owner anyway. Therefore, I would not want people to perceive business owners as getting away with it; they would be still paying, but just not directly. The tax has not been effective and is not transparent. The rationale for a land tax is superior to that for commercial rates because the latter does not dissuade people from generating productive assets on sites, for example, but does dissuade people from engaging in non-productive use of assets.