COUNTRY SETTLER AND LAND TAX.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12929, 27 July 1905, Page 7

COUNTRY SETTLER AND LAND TAX.

Sir,—"Sentinel,"- in your issue of 14th ult,, charges me with having made misleading statements, which, he says, make it very evident I have made no serious study of the above question. A few statements of his emphatically prove that it is he, and not I, Who has hot studied the question. 'Sentinel" compares the position, as regards land tax, of a fanner with £5000. of land value and a wealthy professional man with only £100 worth. Sivli comparisons are absurd. There are a -ew farmers with £5000 worth, but I fail to find the wealthy professional man, who only uses £100 worth. Another proof of Sentinel's" shallow study of this question: He says a 5 per cent, land value tax would take away the whole selling value of land, and that the owner of £100 worth of land would the first year pay £105 of taxes and not £5 as I stated. No one proposes to introduce single tax all at once, the method suggested being to increase the land tax Id in the £ each, say, five years, or even 10 for that' matter, so that in the gradual change all matters would naturally right themselves. As the tax increased greater prosperity would tend to increase land values, and the tax itself would tend to decrease them, so. that between the two the tax would, I believe, reach fully 8d in the £ before land commenced to fall in value. But even if single tax were adopted at once the result would not be as stated. What would happen would be, say, a man owned £100 of land value he would pay £5 in land tax, and, as "Sentinel" says, the whole sell-

ing value of his land would bo gone. The using value and the exchange value, however, would remain, and owing to removal of all Customs, excise, stamp, death, and other duties, and income, mortgage, sheep, and all other taxes, and also wholesale and retail profits on Customs duties, every such owner, although losing the selling value of his land, would receive more than twice its annual value every year in return. "Sentinel" says there is very little farming land that, would he capable of bearing a 5 per cent. tax. It is quite true there is a large area of farming lal v l that would be incapable of bearing a s„joer cent, tax in ■. addition ■to all existing interest and tax charges, especially if assessed on present-day speculative values, which, I contend,- are more than twice their using values. But single tax is not an additional tax, as I have already pointed out, but is one simple, natural, direct tax in'place of numerous complicated, unnatural, indiIn conclusion, "Sentinel" says:

rect tax* ____, _ ___. "What man would be foolish enough to undergo all the privation:? and hardships, the risks and' years of unrequited toil, inseparable from the work of bringing into cultivation the virgin soils of the back blocks, if his losses were to be borne by himself, and his profits to be taken by townspeople?'' This reminds me of the chapter on "Snakes" in a boolean Iceland, which read:—" There are no snakes' in Iceland:" likewise there would be no isolated back blocks under single tax. These are only caused by land speculation,, which would be entirely prevented by single tax. In reply to his final sentence: The farmers would ..benefit even more than the townspeople by the change in taxation.

F. M. Kino, Hon. See..National Single Tax League.