The Press. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1879.

Press, Volume XXXI, Issue 4206, 21 January 1879, Page 2

The Press. TUESDAY, JANUARY 21, 1879.

One of the auhjects which: received some attention at the bands of the At-torney-General iji "his Dunedia speejsh was the Ministerial scheme of taxing land. Hβ began by explaining at some length the theories which 'the Govern-; ment held on. the,matter,:- . They started;' he said, mik the assumption that land was different front aU. other kinds of property, and he, proceeded to. prove this position by givrngjtn' instance. ~ Take j a man,; he said, who? has: a quarter-acre section in Dunedin, originally purchased for 012 IQs pet acre. ■ Kpthujg hadJepn; done to it since, and it was now worth, cay, £1000 or £30001 value was the result of• settlement, and therefore .the State -ought to derive' sbine benefit from . each Juncreasei Indeed, Mr. "Stent- went -fche length of stating it as his conviction that the State should never have/parted with the fee simple of the lands of the colony at all, but should have reserved to itself the full benefit of what lias been called the " nn"earned increment." Of course the Attorney-General is free to hold what opinions he chooses on the subject, bat we fail to see what practical application his mode of reasoning has to the state of things in New Zealand, where the Crown has-alienated, and is now alienating as, rapidly as it can, its Crown lands. A little consideration will show how wild and impractical this e imearned' ifeeretheory is. Howls, any application to be given to the doctrine? What portion of the increased value of land, in the view of the Government, 'belongs to jibe State; and how would it be possible to apply ' this theory in each a manner as to avoid ! inflicting the greatest injustice upon ' a Ewqjenamber of Individuals? Mr. Stoat's experience *s a professional man toil hini that landed property in the colony ia continually changing hands. It is a rare thing' indeed to find that. a section remains contmnously in the possession of one holder. In the: eoorse' of twenty ye«s it may have been sold twenty times, and the present bolder may Have £aid : fell value for It.. To state as a reason, tierrfore, why he shoeLi be taxed, that tie. section of laud which he holds

and for which he paid say £5000, was originally bought for £50, is, on the face of it, both unreasonable and nnjust. He has derived no benefit from its increased value, for he has Jhad to pay the present price of the land. This would be no solitary instance, but the general rule, for a large portion of the land in the colony has passed oat of the hands of the original possessors. But supposing that a land tax is, for other reasons, desirable and necessary, we maintain that the attempt of the Government to impose such a tax upon what, is. called, the "unimproved" value is impracticable." 'It~might at first"sight be Ulought "that" it swrald be easy enough tcf ascertain what the Value of land in x* particular locality was -with all the improrammie upon it, and' then to deduct such ?improvemente, and so arrive at what would be the value of the land had it been fief t untouched. We have in former articled shown that the practical difficulties surrounding the question ere ,co to render the Land Tax Act almost unworkable. At the present moment ; the assessors are .busy throughout ;the colony. Forms have been issued to (the owners of property which they are expected to fill up, bat these forms are so complicated and incomprehensible as to be nearly useless. No doufet a value will be arrived at after infinite trouble and at great $ost to the Government, but it will not be jthecj value contemplated by the Land Tax Acts. It is only necessary to take an instance or two to illustrate our meaning. Take jthe case of a farm which was originally a swamp. It has since been drained and fenced, and so improved as to be completely altered in character. How is it possible to arrive at the " unimproved" value of such land ? Or again, as ;we have before pointed out, there are vast areas of land all over New Zealand, which were at one time very valuable on account of the timber. Bat when that disappeared the land became practically useless. On the other hand there are lands, the clearing of which from timber has had just the opposite , effect. How is it possible in these oases to arrive at an equitable value of the land? We feel confident that, the practical difficulties in the way of arriving at the value of the land jas contemplated in the Land Tax Act will be so great as to lead to an early alteration of the measure. Once accept the prin-, ciple that the basis of taxation should;be that value which . every citizen holds in'■ the country, and any application of those visionary notions and impracticable crotchets can be entirely dispensed with. J

.Not, content with the enunciation of such a scheme, Mr. Stout finds it necessary in order to give force and point to his arguments to misrepresent the views of those in the House who ventured to oppose his principles. " What " was the kind of taxation," he ssiid " that the Opposition proposed , * !* "They said you must tax all property " alike." Mr. Stout then proceeded ,t6" to show what is meant by taxing all property alike, and took the. instance of ; a farmer, " All his improvements he said, "would be iaxed^—that is, realised "property. .Then if he, has' sheep " they would be taxed—that is realised " property. Their wool gets into a &\dte,, " and a tax has to be paid on it. ; Itis " then sent to the Mosgiei Factory, say " where the tax collector comes round, and " tKe owner; is asked to nil in a schedule V'BhowiDg' his : realised property^—hie tweeds are thus realised Next ".year these tweeds'"'get intd the tailor's " he wonld have us pay stax ''on -them before they were madeiinto ", coats, and when they were made into " coats, or ■ anything else, as the case " might be, he would havb ,to f pay ofiie ,'iax. ,on these ,:.,' Mr.; Stout goes on further to show that each "7a'.i*ix! wonld be most calamitons to th&; country,' that it would tax .the goods in every one's store, and press upon all 'trades, and in a most in3urious manner, that it would in fact ' crash them out &f; -existence. Such is the scheme of taxation which Mr. Stout would have his constituents believe wiae- proposed by the Gpppsition last session. We need not pay nc«'such mad proposals ever emanated 'from that source. - Because those ' opposed to tie Government pointed but the injustice of fixing upon- one class of and' singling it out] specially for taxation^they : are represented as advocating tho direct .taxation of every Idnd of property doipi' place, hsb session the financial proto the smallest article of personal clothing. How utterly >at variance wijth the actual facts such a presentation ; of the caseis,, every one knows who is at all acquainted with, the debates which took posals of ti»e, Grovernment; But the above is only one example out of many instances, of the general wildness of Mr. Stout's method of argument, some further .illustrations of which wo shall give in a future article. •: ' !