WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 155, 30 June 1916, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

ASSESSMENT BILL. THE MORTGAGE TAX. Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON. June 2S. SOMETHING IN A NAME. The provision in the Assessment Bill for the abolition of the much-discussed mortgage tax naturally has provoked a good deal of more or loss flippant talk about the "whirligig of time" and "the irony of Fate." The familiar phrases come glibly from every critical tongue that would gibe at the Minister of Finance. But as a matter of plain fact, the abolition of the mortgage tax proposed by Sir .Joseph Ward is a very different I tiling from the abolition urged by Mr. 1 Massey when lie was making his way to I the position he has since achieved. Mr. I Massey would have relieved from taxation not only the capitalist who lent his I money to the farmer, but also the j farmer who owned the land, and the rej suit would have been a large and everincreasing loss of revenue to the State. He made no attempt, for obvious reasons, to put his crude scheme into operation during the three years he held office untrammelled by a strong Liberal element in his Cabinet". Hut Sir Joseph Ward has come to his rescue with a proposal which will get rid of the obnoxious I title without impairing the public reII venue. Simply the contributions from '.the lcuder and the borrower will be readjusted on a basii it is hoped will be satisfactory to both of them. The "whirligig of time" and the "irony of fate" have not brought the Minister of Finance to a renunciation of the principles be was defending a few year 3 ago. PATRIOTISM AND TAXATION. During the debate in the Hou6c last night several members urged that subscriber to patriotic funds, past, present, and future, should be relieved from taxation on their contributions. Just whether the subscribers should be allowed, for the purpose of assessment, to deduct their contributions from their war profits or from the amount of their income tax none of the speakers made quite clear. But the Minister of Finance, in answering their appeals, took tlie extreme view that if he acceded to their request his revenue would be reduced by the total amount of the subscriptions, some two millions sterling, and that instead of taking two millions from war profits he would have to take four millions. But he did not base his emphatic refusal to listen to the proposal upon this fantastic deduction. He thought it would be an insult to the genorous-hearted people who had contributed to the various funds out of pure loyalty and patriotism to band back the whole or part of their contributions on the assumption that they had repented of their gifts. That, at any rate, was how he would feel in regard to the help he had been privileged to give. He might have added that the larger part of the total contributions had been received anonymously from people of small means to whom no restitution could be made, though their sacrifice probably had been greater than that of the donor ol thousands.