RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUES.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 11339, 31 July 1902, Page 4

RATING ON UNIMPROVED VALUES.

Those apologists for the Eating on Unimproved Values who urge tihat if the Act is amended so as to shift the payment of rates from the leaseholder to the freeholder there will be no ground for complaint, either 3o not know what they are talking about, or else want to throw dust in the eyes of the public. The Church Property Trustees are a "bete noire" in the eyes of a good many people, and it is very convenient to be able to bring them forward just now as if their land were the only land affected by the injustice of the new system. As a matter of fact, as we show in another column, there are many small freeholders in St. Albans who have acquired their little holdings by their own industry and self-denial,and these will feel the exactions of the new; system most acutely. Whether a man gets his living by farming ten acres, which he leases from the Church Property Trustees, or whether he .holds the freehold himself, it is equally unjust that a larger share of the rates should be placed on :his shoulders, while his wealthier neighbour is correspondingly relieved. The truth is the system is unjust to the core, inasmuch as it entirely ignores the principle of taxing a man according to his means. A correspondent, writing in our issue of Tuesday, gave two instances of well-to-do householders whose rates are materially reduced under the new system. This year, Mr G. G. Stead, on a valuation of £6679 for house and grounds, pays only £17 8s 9d on a general rate of 3d in tbe £ on the unimproved value, although last year, under the old system, he paid £25 12s Id on a valuation of £4916. On the increased valuation he would have had to pay £54 15s 9d, so tftat, in other words, the new system reduces the amount li* has to pay on the general rate by about one-half. In the case of Mr Allan McLean's house—l he largest and finest private residence in Christchurch—it is said that tbe rates will be reduced to about one-fourth. These are striking examples, but they are by no means exceptional, as the further batch of cases from St. Albany which we publish this morning, convincingly show. While the struggling dairy farmer or market gardener finds his rates doubled, and in some cases nearly trebled, city gentlemen living in fine two-story houses in the Papanui road have the satisfaction this year of finding their rates appreciably lightened. There is no justice in such a system as this. Apart from the fact that the well-to-do residents in Papanui road are better able to afford an increase than a rural cottager or small farmer, it is the ratepayer who lives in a good house in a, residential locality who derives the chief benefit from the rates. The local expenditure on lighting, drainage, asphalt footpaths, and the like, materially increases ths comfort' of the resident, and adds to the value of his house. Surely it is only fair that he should pay for these luxuries, rather than the struggling settler in the outskirts, who has do asphalt paths, or lamps, or drains in the neighbourhood of his property. How Mr EU and his very obsequious fugleman caa defend such an iniquitous system as this, on tbe extraordinary plea that it is to benefit the now at the expense of the

riob, is entirely beyond our comprehension. Probably they none of them thought very much about it. Mr EU -wanted a Ettle notoriety—which, by the war, he has successfully achieved—and seized upon the unimproved value system as something new, sanctioned by the name of Henry George, without himself foreseeing exactly where it would lead him. What excuse hie journalistic henchmen have to make had probably be left to themselves to explain.