STAMP DEPARTMENT

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue LXXIV, 28 August 1919, Page 6

STAMP DEPARTMENT

REVENUE WORK RAPIDLY INCREASING.

In the Government's Statistician's "Abstract of Statistics" just issued are some interesting particulars concerning the Stamp Department. For the year ended March 31 last the revenue from that Department amounted to no less a sum than £2,143,721 18s Bd. What is amazing is the rate of the revenue's growth. The figures quoted are nearly double the amount realised during the previous year, and as the amount netted for the first quarter of the 1919-20 year amounts to £742,229 10s yd, it will be seen that the year promises a yield of nearer £3,000,000 than £2,000,000. Of the £2,143,721 collected for the year 1918-19, the largest contribution was made by death duties, which realised £847,601, but the item which showed the most surprising increase was that under the heading "Duty on Instruments," which produced £491,162, or nearly half a million revenue. This was the money derived in stamp duty on interchanges or transfers of property, 'but that amount is going to be dwarfed into insignificance by this year's return if the existing "boom" in property continue-!. The first quarter of the 1919-20 year had yielded £274,736 from "duty on instruments," at which rate the revenue from that source alone should reach a million, or double the total for last year. The Stamp Department also has the totalisator returns in its care. For the 1918-19 year the "tote" produced £229,272 for the Government. For the first quarter of the current official year (ended June 30), the totalisator returns amounted to £99,817 J on which basis (with all the big spring and summer meetings to come), the revenue from that source should not be much short of half a million.