LAND SETTLEMENT.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13909, 7 December 1910, Page 8

LAND SETTLEMENT.

As our readers will remember, the Land Bill of 1910—this to distinguish it from ail the other Land Bills which the Government have gicdly dropped overhoard in other years—contained no provision for relieving the land-owners, whose land was compulsorily seised ior leasing purposes, from the payment of the graduated'land tax. The Government's attention being promptly and loudly called to hi.s flagrant injustice, Sir Joseph Ward proffered the excuse that it was a mistake —the-wrong draft had been handed to the printer—and that it was not intended to penalise the land-owner by making him pay the additional tax on land from which he was only to receive a return of 4J per cent. A correspondent in this issue asks, somewhat pertinently, why the man who voluntarily leases his land should not be put in the same position, as regards non-liability for the graduated tax, as he would have been if, in the almost unimaginable event of the Land Bill passing, the Government had taken his land for leasehold settlement. He remits out that at present a landowner has the choice of only two ways of escaping tho penal taxation imposed upon him by the Governmentone by selling to another freeholder, and the other by allowing the State to resume his land for closer settlement, if it wants to do so. Wo are afraid that tho Government are not looking about for means to enable the landowner to escape payment of taxation, and that they would lend but unsympathetic ears to any suggestion in that direction. Our correspondent is on sounder ground when he asks if it would not be "reasonable to give our

" land-owners an easement from taxa- '• tion if they place as many leasehold " settlers on th» land as can be done

%i by the State." If the Government were as deeply in earnest over the settlement of the land as they would have the public believe, they would adopt any course, so long as the State was not a loser by it, in order to carry out their purpose, and if it was a proper thing, as it undoubtedly would have been, to relievo landowners from the graduated tax when their land was resumed by the State tor leaseholders, it is difficult to see how the State would suffer if similar relief were afforded to any landowner who leased his land voluntarily. Of course, the matter would not he so easily settled as some might think: the land-owner, for instance, who wished to secure, by leasing his land, exemption trom this tax, would no doubt have to be content with charging lower rentals than he would otherwise be able to obtain. Whether "the loss in this respect would he repaid by the gain in reduced taxation would be a question depending for its answer on the circumstances of each case.