THE INCOME TAX PROPOSAL

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 175, 23 June 1930, Page 6

THE INCOME TAX PROPOSAL

If land, taxation is to be abolished, the income tax could be fairly applied to farmers in general, and the possibility of any one of their number escaping his legitimate share of taxation would be done away with. The land tax is objectionable, because it actually acts as a levy on the capital sunk in the farmer’s business. Under the old Liberal regime the farmer who paid land tax was exempt from the payment of income tax, and also from land "tax if his unimproved land value was less than £SOO, the payment of tax on all value in excess of that amount being regarded as the equivalent of the income tax payments made by other taxpayers. During the war farmers paid both land and income tax, but when the burden of the latter was removed by the late Mr Massey, after peace was restored, it was found that some farmers (Crown leaseholders mostly) were escaping taxation which they should have been paying, hence the amendments made in the taxation measure last session enabling the Government to levy on the landholder’s income or collect the land tax and super tax which ever proved the greater. Land tax collections last year amounted to over a million and a-half', and the question the Government would have to consider in substituting farmers’ income tax for land tax is how far the substitution of the one tax for the other would affect the revenue. It is open to question if, had the farmers been assessed on last year’s income, they would have had to pay as much in the way of income tax as they had to pay in land tax, and, if that is the case, it presents a fairly strong argument in favour of the State levying upon the man’s income rather than on the value of his land, which for Government valuation purposes is frequently placed on too high a level. It is as well that the Farmers’ Union Conference has thrashed this matter out, and given the Government a lead in the direction of substituting income for land taxation. It is doubtful, however, if the House, as at present constituted, will agree to the change.