TARANAKI TE UAMAIRANGI.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 231, 12 September 1922, Page 2

TARANAKI TE UAMAIRANGI.

TAXATION. (To the Editor.) Sir, —Your article on taxation, while technically and academically correct, stops far short of reality in respect of the burden of taxation. Parliament authorises Mr. Massey to tax income and the unimproved value of land. But at the end of the Act is a clause empowering him to issue regulations, and he avails himself of this provision, to levy taxation greatly in excess of that authorised or contemplated by Parliament. Under it he issues regulations specifically forbidding valuers to give anything like just allowance for improvements, or to recognise items of expenditure, thus unjustly magnifying income. Suppose, for instance, that by dint of that industry, and thrift he is always Breaching, 1 have accumulations which give me £5OO a year; and suppose that I lose £lOOO on my farming operations. If I wanted to float myself into a company, and issued a prospectus putting my income at £5OO, 1 should most properly be sent to gaol for false pretences. But Mr. Massey, by his regulations, compels his officials to assess my income at £5OO, and taxes me on that amount, making me pay very much more than 20/- in the £ instead of the 8/9 your quote as the maximum for the richest persons. If I am a tenant I can include rent in my expenditure. But if 1 venture to acquire a freehold, which he so loudly extols, he prevents me from including land tax, which is merely a rent or license fee which I pay to the State for presuming to own land at all. In fact, every demand that is made upon me is characterised by false pretences which grossly exceed any authority granted by Parliament. 1 have sense enough to realise that money must be found. But I want credit for my payments. 1 object very, strongly to Mr. Massey’s loud and continuous boast that, by virtue of his supreme financial ability and his yearning affection for the producer, he has been able to let me off with a shilling in the the pound, when it is never less than half a crown, and often very much more than a sovereign; 1 object that he should arm Mr. Holland with the statement that 1 am only paying a shilling; I object to his statement that in paying that shilling I am getting, off more lightly than if 1 were in some other country; I object to false pretences under the guise of a square deal. But, after all, where do I stand? I might as well apply to a half-grown rabbit for redress, as to either of the four Hawke’s Bay—er—representatives. I can do no more than growl. Surely you will not deny me that.— I am, etc., PRODUCER.