BERLIN'S DEFICIT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 80, 6 April 1910, Page 4

BERLIN'S DEFICIT.

MAY CAUSE AN EXODUS. The Berlin Municipal Budget closes with a deficit of £150,000, to coyer which tho authorities contemplate increasing their communal taxation. The Berlin system of municipal taxation in based on Stato taxation. Five years aro the municipal taxes amounted to 80 per cent, of the Prussian State income tax, then it gradually went up until it reached 100 per cent. Now, states a correspondent, it is proposed to increase it to 105 per cent., and simultaneously to increase the land and trade taxes to 166 per cent, of the State assessment. It is feared that should this plan b* adopted there will be an exodus of middle class ratepayers to the suburb*, where the rates are not so high. The municipality can hardly afford to lose so many ratepayers, ana may consequently desist from impolicy. On the other hand, it is Juki possible, that the threat to increase the income tax is being used as a means for deciding the Municipal Council of BtorTin to accept the new unearned increment tax on land values that has been proposed, but has encountered such opposifewo as to hinder it being passed into law.