In a parliamentary democracy witth universal suffrage, legislation is one form of machinery by whicbh the people may achieve their community goals. Ideally, statutes relevant to the valuation of land, the rating and taxing of land and tthe planning of land use, should be complementary, not fragmented or mnutually subversive. Land value is the measure of the? value in exchange of an individual's institutional rights in land annd can only exist in a society which allows land to be traded as a

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... odity. Where land is not traded, it has no value in exchange wvhich can be measured and used as a basis for rating, and the problemss of compensation and betterment do not arise. Taxes have been raised on land ssince ancient times but the imposition of statutory planning in the twenntieth century has created technical anomalies. These anomalies relatee particularly to the basis of rating, the equitable distribution of rattes, and to the preservation of open space and historic buildings. The cdifficult problems of Compensation and Betterment have been furtheer complicated by the introduction of statutory planning. Many of these issues may be whollly or partly resolved by using Assessed Annual Value rating wherever statutory planning exists.