The Groundshare mechanism — consolidated specification (v0.1)

2026-07-18 · wave 12 · consolidates the design rulings of waves 1–11 into one document. Each element cites the wave that settled it and the analysis behind it. Items marked [FLOYD] await his ruling; everything else is the working spec.

1. The settlement

Each year, every citizen settles against their equal share of the nation's ground rent:

T = s × (R̄ − R_held)

• R_held — the assessed annual rental value of land attributed to the person (rent basis adopted w4/w10: rental value persists when the settlement deflates speculative prices; the rate-on-price form P×r is presentation only).
• R̄ — the per-person equal share: national assessed land rental value plus natural-resource rents, divided by the resident population.
• s — the settled share of rent, 0 → 1 over the transition (see §7). At s = 1 the full rent settles: holding ground beyond one's share yields nothing, and the landless receive their full share in cash.
• Positive T: the person receives. Negative: they pay. One straight line, no kink (w0): the marginal cost of holding one more dollar of land rental value is s everywhere, so the threshold sets who nets in or out, never anyone's incentive.
• Zero net revenue (w0): ΣT = 0 across all persons and entities. The state keeps nothing.

Current magnitudes (w1/w13, StatCan Q1 2026): base $7.86T (land $6.49T + resources $1.37T); equal share ≈$190k/person capitalized; annual flow ≈$353–394B/yr net, ≈$8,500–$9,500/person-yr at full settlement — net of the ≈$38.5B land share of existing property taxes (w17); low end on measured resource-rent flows, high end annuitizing the resource stock (analysis/canada-estimate.md, analysis/resource-rent-flows.md, analysis/property-tax-interaction.md).

2. Who counts

• Working position: every resident, including children (w3) — shares stack per household ($456k allowance for the average 2.41-person household), which is the design's family protection and part of why four of five wealth quintiles are net recipients (analysis/household-incidence.md).
• [FLOYD] Per-adult alternative (bigger individual cheques, thinner household protection; one-person households net only ≈+$2.2k under per-resident) and the residents-vs-citizens boundary (the site currently says residents; newcomer phase-in rules would need design either way).

3. The allowance and attribution

• Only natural persons hold allowances. Entities — corporations, trusts, governments — hold none and pay s × R on their full holdings (w3). This is load-bearing three times over: it funds the household sector's ≈+$144B/yr net surplus (NUMBERS.md #8), it reverses the sheltering gradient (incorporating land raises the charge, w4 §5), and it spares most attribution work (entity land needs no person mapping).
• Personally titled land attributes directly. Trust-held land attributes to beneficiaries via the beneficial-ownership registries Canada is building (CBCA registry, BC LOTA). Family members' allowances pooling against family holdings is the design working, not gaming (w4).
• Government-held land pays into the pool (a general-revenue-to-dividend transfer, ≈4.5% of the pool) — kept in the working spec, flagged as a parameter.

4. Assessment

• Existing provincial mass-assessment machinery runs everywhere with appeals; published land/improvement splits exist today in BC (verified, w9) and Quebec (regulated, open data; Montreal/Sherbrooke parsed w20–21); Saskatchewan exposes the split per-parcel via SAMAView; Ontario AND Alberta compute land values but publish totals only — the readiness gap and the transparency ask (analysis/assessment-readiness.md, w14/w22).
• Farm-class land assesses at agricultural use value — every province's existing convention — with the development premium charged only on conversion (w11). This is what keeps farm charges tenant-rent-sized.
• Rental values derive from assessed values via observed rent-to-price ratios by class (residential cap rates, farmland cash-rent ratios ~2–2.5%, commercial cap surveys) — the Q1 measurement study hardens this (academic-path.md).
• The roll is published. Transparency is the anti-corruption answer (w4).

5. Deferral (cash-flow protection)

Net charges on a principal residence or working farm may accrue against the land at the government borrowing rate, settling on sale, conversion, or estate — BC's seniors' property-tax deferral machinery, generalized (w4 §2, w11). Cash-flow hardship is thereby a solved administrative case, not a moral objection.

6. The container

• Working position: national pool — simplest moral claim, most protective of the majority, verified numbers (w2).
• The measured stakes (w8/w9): 6× provincial spread in per-capita residential value; Metro Vancouver detached ≈$54k/yr payers; the national pool makes the metros the engine. The layered endgame (resource rents provincial per s.109/s.92A; nature-layer national; agglomeration increments local per the Henry George Theorem) is the analyzed alternative (analysis/container-question.md).
• [FLOYD] The container ruling — national-only vs national-lead-with-layered- roadmap. All price tags in the analyses.

7. Transition

• Announcement repricing computed in analysis/transition-path.md: at a 20-year linear phase-in, land prices ≈37% of today on announcement (Vancouver detached property ≈−53%, national average home ≈−33%) — while the wealth-conversion identity means most households gain net worth on day one (claim ≈$190k/person vs land loss).
• Working recommendation [FLOYD to ratify]: 20-year linear phase-in of s + recent-buyer basis credit (last ~5 years, scaled to price paid — protects the leveraged sympathetic tail without Prop 13 lock-in) + universal deferral (§5). Immediate implementation rejected (banking channel: $2.41T residential mortgages); grandfather-until-sale weakly rejected (lock-in evidence).

8. Interactions with the existing system

• Existing municipal property taxes continue (they fund services). Settled (w17): the settlement runs on rent NET of property taxes attributable to land (analysis/property-tax-interaction.md) — no double charge, municipal finance untouched, and the land share of property tax is recognized as the already- running LOCAL layer of the layered design (the HGT tier Canada operates today).
• The settlement replaces no federal/provincial tax by construction (zero revenue). Hybrids that retain a slice for tax cuts exist but reintroduce the tax framing (w0 honest limit — unchanged).
• Payments are property income in form; their income-tax treatment (taxable? excluded like TFSA?) is an open parameter with distributional consequences (queued for the Q2 microsimulation).

9. Administration in one paragraph

Once a year, every resident receives a settlement statement: their attributed land rental value, their share, and one number — receive or pay. Most people receive; a majority of payers are entities billed like any tax remittance. Deferral is a checkbox for principal residences and working farms. No means test, no application, no program: a registry join (assessment roll × title × population) and a cheque.

Parameters table

Cross-references

proposal.md (origin) · moral-case.md · objections.md · narrative-kit.md · academic-path.md · analysis/: canada-estimate, household-incidence, regional-cut, vancouver-land-share, container-question, transition-path, farm-cut.

Groundshare — a proposal in open development. Every number traces to a cited public source with its retrieval date; corrections are published, not erased. Rebuilt 2026-07-19 from the repo's research files.