LAND' AND INCOME TAX V. PROPERTY TAX.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 185, 7 August 1890, Page 2

LAND' AND INCOME TAX V. PROPERTY TAX.

RESULT-A SURPLUS AND AN (J A'TAXED BREAKFAST.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —As interested poople are trying to convince farmers, settlers and resident landowners generally that a one per cent, land tax would come heavier on tbeir pockets than the property tax, as at present represented, of one penny in the £—through your well-road columns you must prove to them tbub such is not the case. For instanpe, one ie now taxed one penny in the pound on unimproved land, valued say as the rate of £4 per acre—a 300-acre farm is therefore mulct to tho tune of< £5 a year. Now, land of the quality I am writing about nan lately been i= old, in its unimproved condition and contiguous to that improved, by Government at £1 per acre ; consequently the 300-acre farm could only bo taxed on a rateable value of £300, which at one per cent, would amount to £3 per annum, or a saving to the owner of £2 in tho year.

My idea is that a land tax of £ per cent. and an income tax of sixpence in the pound, with a rebate on £150, would bo fairer thnn the single tax. Why should A, who has brought £6,000 iuto the colony and invested it here, perhaps neither too widely nor too well (like the Takapuna hero), be forced to contribute some £22 per annum, though not receiving, as cvi bo proved by innumerable instance*, 3 percent, all round for the money so invepted in the colony ; when B, the pubiic servant — say os postmaster to a town of rivo hundred inhabitants — does not pay a red cent out of his £300 annual salary ?

Is this property tax a fair tax ? Is it calculated to eneouragctbo immigration of the very class the country requires, viz., the capitalist farmer or grazior ?—for the latter ia what we shall want when tho tax on unimproved values bursts up the big estates into ono thoußandacre thoroughly laid-down sheep farm*, for it is the wellfed, wool-beating mutton-maker that will pnll us through our financial difficulties when tho land is co farmed as to carry eight sheep to an acre, summer and winter.

The " Hobnailor " said in Auckland that the extra 2d a lb on tea would not bo felc, because the «tfrst cost of that necessary hud fallen very considerably. This statement, true at the time when uttered, will not hold at present, and certainly nob in the future, for with the rise in the value of silver all Eastern produce has gone up 15 per cent., and the rupee promises to touch Iβ 8d now that- the Americans will coin some £12,000,000 worth of dollars par annum. This will moro than absorb the present output of the United States eilver mines, so that metal will shortly bo at a premium. Your mercurial correspondent, in issue of 24th ulfc., writing from the Thames and speaking of the Piihipuhi Prospectors' crushinge, puts the value of eilver at 3s per ounce, though at the present moment I veil! bet him a dollar it is worth over four shillings. That this rise in value will prove a boon to the grand fellows who, in faceof every hardship and tho übter want of compassion of a (thank God) moribund Government, goes without saying, though perhaps it ■ may not be so generally known that fche price of other products of thie land of plenty, notably wheat and flsix, will ere long rise in sympathy with the rupeeand the dollar, for the English importers will no longer gob the benefit of the exchango, which twelve months ago amounted, fco no less than seventeen per cent, in favour of the transmitter of gold- fco •• the'-countries where silver currency prevails. The cancelling of the Is 6d per oz. duty on silver plate at Home will also favourably affect the price of that metal,as it will undoubtedly greatly stimulate the manufacture and sale of solid silver articles both useful and ornamental. —I am, etc., Pko Bono Publico.