UNIMPROVED VALUES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13750, 15 May 1908, Page 5

UNIMPROVED VALUES.

MR. ASQUITH'S PROPOSAL, \ -n V,. ' •• tT By Telegraph— Association.— Copyright. . London, May 13. The Prime Minister (Mr. H. H. Asquith) has notified that he will introduce a Bill providing for a, uniform system in England and Wales of separate valuations of sites and buildings. -

'1 lie advocates of (he taxation of land values contend that, the increased value of land due to the labour and expenditure of the whole community belongs to those whose efforts have made it-the community— that some means should be devised to secure for the community that increased value. One method is to secure it by taxation, which involves in the first place the separate assessment of land , and buildings where they exist together. It was the object of the Scottish Valuation Bill to secure this. Before the Bill wan introduced, the late Prime Minister declared that, "In providing for a separate valuation of the value of the land apart from buildings and improvements, we shall be preparing the way for a reform of the rating system in our urban areas which: is urgently needed and properly desired, and we shall at the same time very much simplify the process of the public acquisition of land by getting a record of how much of their value is due to improvements and how much to the annual value of the land. It is an indispensable preliminary step. It will -how us what the land values are, and where they are." Mr. Churchill put the same thing another way: "The movement for land reform aimed," he said, "at the discovery of new springs of production, at- an equitable partition of corporate and individual increments from day to day and from year to year through the operation of just laws regulating the acquisition of wealth. They had no intention of plundering the landlord, and they had no intention of allowing him to plunder them. They did not intend to take away from ;.ny class what belonged to it, but they were resolved, if they could, to prevent any class from steadily absorbing, under the shelter of Hie law, wealth in whose ere it ion they had borne no share, wealth which belonged, not to them, but to the community."