The Daily Telegraph. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1891.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6313, 25 November 1891, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1891.

Me C. M. CBoaißiß, Commissioner of Taxes, in an advertisement, has published the following notification :—" In order to afford full opportunity to pprsoue and companies of completing returns of land and mortgages for the purposes of the Land and Income Assessment Act, it is hereby notified that such returns will be received by the Commissioner up to the 31st jJecember, 1891, and will be accepted as if they had been received on the 28th November, 1891. Such returns must, however, still be made showing the property as existing on the Ist November instant." It is feared by a good many persons that even by December 31st they will be unable to solve the problem of how to fill up the returns of their land and mortgages. The whole Act is a puzzle, and the Commissioner must have been at his wits' end before he accomplished the compilation of a form on which the returns have to be made. The form, no doubt, id the only form that could have been devised from such a muddled-up Act; but there is not a man who has received one who can by his own unaided effort fill it up correctly. The Auckland Herald, on this vexed subject, says the questions to be solved are manj and difficult, and numerous problems have been propounded to us which we find it hopelese to try to answer satisfactorily. A man owns a farm for which he paid say £1000. He has expended on what are reckoned improvements under the Act £2000. He is told to deduct the improvements, and to return himself as taxable on the value of the land. But he knows that the whole property, if put on the market would, at tho present time, realise only £1500. If he estimates the improvements at what they have cost him, he is worth nothing for taxing purposes. Suppose the valuator admits that the property would fetch only £1500, how is he to distinguish the depreciation on land from the depreciation on the improvements ? People also feel aggrieved at thiß: Every man is asked to tax himself on his land at what it would fetch in the market. But then the value of land is its value as a freehold, and the freehold value this very Government, are doiDg their uttermost entirely to destroy. They are destroying as an iniquity the very basis upon which they levy this new taxation. They require a man to make an estimate of the value of his property on the supposition of its being sold as freehold, while at the same time they declare that to deal with it as freehold, is a fraud on the people. There is also a question in reference to the graduated tax. Suppose a man or a company owns land to the value of £90,000, and it is mortgaged to the extent of £70,000. In making up his taxation account for the ordinary tax of Id in the pound, the owner deducts the mortgages. But in regard to the graduated tax, which on this amount would also be a penny, it is laid down : — "No deduction shall be al-

lowed under this Act in respect of any mortgage from the value of the land upon which such graduated tax is payable, in so far as such graduated tax is concerned." Suppose two people arrive in the colony, and take up land of equal value, the one man having tho capital to develop it, and the other having to borrow 011 mortgage to enable hi-n to do so. Each may have made improvements, we will say to the extent of £10,000, the one out of cash brought with him, the other with the borrowed money. The one who is less able to bear has to pay an equal graduated tax with the one who has no mortgage on his property, as this schedule prohibits the deduction of mortgages. He has improved the land, and is taxed for his pains on the money borrowed for the purpose. What will be thought in England of such an absurdity in taxation as this f