SINGLE TAX LEAGUE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4427, 6 August 1901, Page 4

SINGLE TAX LEAGUE.

The manifesto of the National Single Tax League, which we publish in this issue, ought to prove useful as a means of letting people clearly understand the objects and methods of the organisation named. The document would have been more welcome had it demonstrated that the single tax would result in benefit to all producers of wealth, instead of merely stating in a variety of ways that the object of tho proposed change in taxation is to produce economic justice and promote enterprise and prosperity. We fear the argument required to show this is too lengthy and involved to appeal to th e majority of people. For our part, we confess that we cannot go all the way with the single taxers; but the country is to a large extent committed to the policy which they advocate, and the Piemier last week indicated that he is prepared to go a little further with them, by increasing the graduated land tax and diminishing the Customs duties on the necessaries of life. When the Ballanco policy of removing taxes from accumulation and enterprise was adopted, and tho incidence of taxation was shifted from property to income, an important de parture was made ;and the single taxers claim, with some show of reason behind them, that the - prosperity of the past decade is in large measure due to that change. The rating of unimproved values only is a further step towards exempting accumulation and enterprise from taxation; and if in due course the land tax were levied on the unimproved

value, the full scheme would be neat realisation.

It is possible, with strict regard to economic justice, to cSrry the matter the length we have stated, but it would be nothing short of spoliation to increase the land tax to such a point as would appropriate the whole ground rent value to the State. Henrv George and his disciples can of course prove the thing, by elaborate argument, to bo abstractly right ; but that does not alter the fact that it would practically amount to robbery. If the State wishes to expropriate privatelandowners it must compensate them. It is comparatively easy to show that rating and taxing of unimproved values would prove beneficial ;i difficult if not impossible to prove that by so doing all taxes on income and taxes through the Customs would be abolished, without perpetrating gross injustice upon landowners. Unfortunately, too, there is great plausibility in the argument that the rich people who own largo buildings would be relieved of taxation at the expense of those whose improvements are of less value, if the taxes were all levied on the unimproved values of land. There is also a superficial air of proba-i bility about th e statement, which carries weight with country people, that land taxation would mean placing greater, burdens upon the farming class. It is difficult to dissipate these ideas. It can best be done by working towards the goal by slow degrees. The rating of unimproved land values, where adopted in town or country, has been productive of no revolutionary change eo far, but <h«3 influence is distinctly towards the crush, ing out of land speculation, and is to that extent beneficial. If the farmers could be brought to realise that the system means the cheapening of land, their opposition might cease; hut they cannot bo expected to see this truth while extravagant ideas are promulgated about abolishing every other form of taxation and deriving all the State revenue direct, ly from the land. Extreme advocacy always defeats its own object; and wa fully expect that the manifesto of the Single Tax League will hinder rather than promote a desirable reform in the incidence of taxation.