Land Values.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20037, 19 September 1930, Page 10

Land Values.

We print a letter on this page i'rom Mr H. D. Acland which ought to make the commercial community think. The farmer, as Mr Gillanders pointed out yesterday, has been thinking about the subject for a very long time, but it is not sufficient that his, position should be realised Only by himself. When a farmer finds himself with five hundred pounds to meet a bill of costs in excess of one thousand pounds, over and above his own labour and keep, he does not need to be a statesman to know what must sooner or later happen. But a statesman needs more than his own personal knowledge of anomalies before he can end or remove them. The farmer.,will go on "being taxed " on an obviously false basis of assessment" until the hardship inflicted ou him disturbs the rest of the community. It disturbs so few now only because so few realise how general it is, and what it means. When everybody understands that there arc very few'farms in Canterbury which are not valued for taxation purposes above their present productive valuo, and that even when an appeal is made to the Assessment Court it is extremely difficult to get a strictly economic decision, it may happen—it will certainly not happen sooner—that the farmer will begin to be the real, and not merely the popular, object of attention by all Governments and Parties.