Property income

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Property income refers to profit or income received by virtue of owning property. The three forms of property income are rent, received from the ownership of natural resources; interest, received by virtue of owning financial assets; and profit, received from the ownership of capital equipment. [1] As such, property income is a subset of unearned income and is often classified as passive income.

Contents

Tax on Property Income

Property income is tax-able in most of the countries including Pakistan. In Pakistan Income Property also known as Rental Income is taxed at Business Slab for individuals. [2]

Economics

Property income is nominal revenues minus expenses for variable inputs (labor, purchased materials and services). Property income represents the return for the supply of both physical capital and financial capital.

Capitalist economic systems are usually defined as those systems where the means of production are privately owned through equity, stock, bonds or privately held by a group of owners who bear the risk of investment and production to generate returns.

In Marxian economics and related schools, property income is a portion of the surplus value produced by an economy, where "surplus value" refers to value beyond what is needed for subsistence. As such, income derived through property ownership constitutes a type of "unearned income" on the basis of economic exploitation for the capitalist class that receives and lives off of property income, [3] because its recipients receive property income by virtue of owning property regardless of their contribution to the social product. As such, the existence of property income based on private property forms the basis for the class division in capitalist economies.

One economic perspective is to bring productive property under public ownership so that each citizen would receive a share of the property income in addition to their normal wage or salary (see: Social dividend). This would eliminate class distinctions, reduce economic inequality, and enable greater economic stability. [4]

See also

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In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the classical factors of production as well as the general infrastructure and capital goods necessary to reproduce stable levels of productivity. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors; or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers.

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or cooperative property, which is owned by one or more non-governmental entities. John Locke described private property as a Natural Law principle arguing that when a person mixes their labor with nature, the labor enters the object conferring individual ownership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic rent</span> Difference between marginal product and opportunity cost

In neoclassical economics, economic rent is any payment to the owner of a factor of production or resource, supply of which is fixed. In classical economics, economic rent is any payment made or benefit received for non-produced inputs such as location (land) and for assets formed by creating official privilege over natural opportunities. In the moral economy of neoclassical economics, economic rent includes income gained by labor or state beneficiaries of other "contrived" exclusivity, such as labor guilds and unofficial corruption.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Economic system</span> System of ownership, production and exchange

An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within a society. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capital accumulation</span> Dynamic that motivates pursuit of profit, central tenet of capitalism

Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form of profit, rent, interest, royalties or capital gains. The aim of capital accumulation is to create new fixed and working capitals, broaden and modernize the existing ones, grow the material basis of social-cultural activities, as well as constituting the necessary resource for reserve and insurance. The process of capital accumulation forms the basis of capitalism, and is one of the defining characteristics of a capitalist economic system.

Passive income is a type of unearned income that is acquired with little to no labor to earn or maintain. It is often combined with another source of income, such as regular employment or a side job. Passive income, as an acquired income, is typically taxable.

The value product (VP) is an economic concept formulated by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy during the 1860s, and used in Marxian social accounting theory for capitalist economies. Its annual monetary value is approximately equal to the netted sum of six flows of income generated by production:

Productive and unproductive labour are concepts that were used in classical political economy mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries, which survive today to some extent in modern management discussions, economic sociology and Marxist or Marxian economic analysis. The concepts strongly influenced the construction of national accounts in the Soviet Union and other Soviet-type societies.

Operating surplus is an accounting concept used in national accounts statistics and in corporate and government accounts. It is the balancing item of the Generation of Income Account in the UNSNA. It may be used in macro-economics as a proxy for total pre-tax profit income, although entrepreneurial income may provide a better measure of business profits. According to the 2008 SNA, it is the measure of the surplus accruing from production before deducting property income, e.g., land rent and interest.

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Differential ground rent and absolute ground rent are concepts used by Karl Marx in the third volume of Das Kapital to explain how the capitalist mode of production would operate in agricultural production, under the condition where most agricultural land was owned by a social class of land-owners who could obtain rent income from farm production. Rent as an economic category is regarded by Marx as one form of surplus value just like net interest income, net production taxes and industrial profits. Marx's main texts on rent theory can be found in the second (edited) volume of Theories of Surplus Value and in Part 6 of Capital, Volume III. Anwar M. Shaikh states that "These remarkably rich and insightful sections of his work are seldom mentioned in the Marxian literature, and are even less understood."

Rentier capitalism is a concept in Marxist and heterodox economics to refer to rent-seeking and exploitation by companies in capitalist systems. The term was developed by Austrian social geographer Hans Bobek describing an economic system that was widespread in antiquity and still widespread in the Middle East, where productive investments are largely lacking and the highest possible share of income is skimmed off from ground-rents, leases and rents. Consequently, in many developing countries, rentier capitalism is an obstacle to economic development. A rentier is someone who earns income from capital without working. This is generally done through ownership of assets that generate yield, such as rental properties, shares in dividend paying companies, or bonds that pay interest.

The social dividend is the return on the natural resources and capital assets owned by society in a socialist economy. The concept notably appears as a key characteristic of market socialism, where it takes the form of a dividend payment to each citizen derived from the property income generated by publicly owned enterprises, representing the individual's share of the capital and natural resources owned by society.

Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that proposes to shift ownership and decision-making power from corporate shareholders and corporate managers to a larger group of public stakeholders that includes workers, consumers, suppliers, communities and the broader public. No single definition or approach encompasses economic democracy, but most proponents claim that modern property relations externalize costs, subordinate the general well-being to private profit and deny the polity a democratic voice in economic policy decisions. In addition to these moral concerns, economic democracy makes practical claims, such as that it can compensate for capitalism's inherent effective demand gap.

Exploitation is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. When applying this to labour, it denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value between workers and their employers. When speaking about exploitation, there is a direct affiliation with consumption in social theory and traditionally this would label exploitation as unfairly taking advantage of another person because of their vulnerable position, giving the exploiter the power.

In Karl Marx's critique of political economy and subsequent Marxian analyses, the capitalist mode of production refers to the systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies. Private money-making in various forms preceded the development of the capitalist mode of production as such. The capitalist mode of production proper, based on wage-labour and private ownership of the means of production and on industrial technology, began to grow rapidly in Western Europe from the Industrial Revolution, later extending to most of the world.

In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and labour power. The concept originated in Ricardian socialism, with the term "surplus value" itself being coined by William Thompson in 1824; however, it was not consistently distinguished from the related concepts of surplus labor and surplus product. The concept was subsequently developed and popularized by Karl Marx. Marx's formulation is the standard sense and the primary basis for further developments, though how much of Marx's concept is original and distinct from the Ricardian concept is disputed. Marx's term is the German word "Mehrwert", which simply means value added, and is cognate to English "more worth".

The socialist mode of production, also known as socialism or communism, is a specific historical phase of economic development and its corresponding set of social relations that emerge from capitalism in the schema of historical materialism within Marxist theory. The Marxist definition of socialism is that of production for use-value, therefore the law of value no longer directs economic activity. Marxist production for use is coordinated through conscious economic planning. According to Marx, distribution of products is based on the principle of "to each according to his needs"; Soviet models often distributed products based on the principle of "to each according to his contribution". The social relations of socialism are characterized by the proletariat effectively controlling the means of production, either through cooperative enterprises or by public ownership or private artisanal tools and self-management. Surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole.

Social ownership is a type of property where an asset is recognized to be in the possession of society as a whole rather than individual members or groups within it. Social ownership of the means of production is the defining characteristic of a socialist economy, and can take the form of community ownership, state ownership, common ownership, employee ownership, cooperative ownership, and citizen ownership of equity. Within the context of socialist economics it refers particularly to the appropriation of the surplus product produced by the means of production to society at large or the workers themselves. Traditionally, social ownership implied that capital and factor markets would cease to exist under the assumption that market exchanges within the production process would be made redundant if capital goods were owned and integrated by a single entity or network of entities representing society. However, the articulation of models of market socialism where factor markets are utilized for allocating capital goods between socially owned enterprises broadened the definition to include autonomous entities within a market economy.

"To each according to his contribution" is a principle of distribution considered to be one of the defining features of socialism. It refers to an arrangement whereby individual compensation is representative of one's contribution to the social product in terms of effort, labor and productivity. This is in contrast to the method of distribution and compensation in capitalism, an economic and political system in which property owners can receive income by virtue of ownership irrespective of their contribution to the social product.

References

  1. O'Hara, Phillip (September 2003). Encyclopedia of Political Economy, Volume 2. Routledge. p. 1135. ISBN   0-415-24187-1. Property income is, by definition, received by virtue of owning property. Rent is received from the ownership of land or natural resources; interest is received by virtue of owning financial assets; and profit is received from the ownership of production capital. Property income is not received in return for any productive activity performed by its recipients.
  2. Zafar, Binte. "Rental Understanding and Optimizing Rental Income Taxes in Pakistan". TaxationPk. Retrieved 2024-07-20.
  3. Sherman, Howard J (1995). Reinventing Marxism . Johns Hopkins University Press. pp.  130. ISBN   978-0801850776. Another index of the capitalist class is the fact that those making more than a million dollars a year made more than 75 percent of their income from property ownership, in the form of profit, rent, and interest…Finally, the income of the capitalist class, that is, property income, including profit, rent, and interest, constitutes more than 28 percent of all U.S. income.
  4. Yunker, James (April 1992). Socialism Revised and Modernized: The Case for Pragmatic Market Socialism . Praeger. pp.  29–31. ISBN   978-0275941345.