GRADUATED LAND TAX.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 191, 14 August 1922, Page 4

GRADUATED LAND TAX.

The Wellington "Evening Post," which, while it docs not support the Liberal party, holds decidedly Liberal views on the land question, lias some perlinent comment on the reeommenda" tion of the Taxation Committee that the graduated land tax should be abolished. We may again explain that the original purpose of the graduated tax was not to get revenue, but to burst up big estates fur closer settlement, and '.hat in rop,ct to the tax town stand on a different footing from rural lands. You can burst tip a great estate in tho country, but you cannot break up a section in Queen Street. The committee considers that the graduated tax is no longer required, since it prevents development, and a groat deal of our hill country cannot produce more by cio.-o settlement, and may indeed produce less. That much land is held in large blocks that is suitable only for pastoral farming on a largo scale is well known to everybody I who knows anything about New Zealand [ conditions. But as the "lost" say-, to I argue from thi- that the graduated tax' should be lifted "would he equivalent to , argue that hoeau-e no law exactly meets' the requirements of exccpliontil cases, j iherofore all law -liotiM be abolished." j The committee does not claim that big! holdings suitable for closer settlement, have ceased to exist, nnd it is well I known, suvs the "Post." tha. apart I from "purely pastoral hill sheep country," there lire "hundreds of thou- , sand* of acres that are not nearly put | to full economic use." The present Government, wo may add. rreognised this when it imposed a special tax- on unimproved land. The "Post" does not think much of the commit tee's "safeguards to en-uro that the land is properly worked." It a-ks whit -afe-tinrd. the committee has in mind. "Most of the talk about securing, hy a-lmini-tra- j tive supervision, the full u--' of land, is, either a pious hope or mere camnufi.'ige: j and the country that exchanges the Lix for '.lie iis-urunce- will soon find that it has purchased a sack of rotten , apples." Nor docs the argument that the graduated income tax provides a sufficient surcharge on .the large landowner imprc.-s it. "The central fuel ol j the situation is that the rural lands,! and the country generally, arc suffering | mainly from the elTects. of nidation, . which was use,l a while ago to make j paper profits, and i- now being u-e l a.-, i a lever to shift the tax burden. A cor- J tain amount of readjustment of that j burden is no doubt needed, but the re- . adjustment should bo approached from ! all points of view." Perhaps if the. ! committee had travelled through the country instead of sitting in Wellington nnd inviting evidence from other parts. it would have come to a different conclusion about the graduated land tax. The committee includes the word | "Ultimately" in its rocfvnuiiondation of I abolition, but the word is really mean- ' ingles*. If the tax is "no longer j required," to say nothing of the opinion] that it is restricting production, there j is no need for it any longer. But it is i required, and it must remain until there | arc no big estates suitable for sub- j i division. • |