TAXATION OF LAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4513, 14 November 1901, Page 2

TAXATION OF LAND.

(By Fair Play.) Ratepayers should record their votes to-day against the proposed new system, for tno lollowing reasons; 1. If the poll be carried it w'ill_ mean increasing tne.hates on nearly ail business premises in the city—in some cases they will bo double, and in odd cases even higher. This great increase of rate s must be borne by monthly tenants, as the landlords will pass :t on to them. In most other cases wnere landlords have given long leases to tne tenants, they have' inserted a clause compelling the tenant to pay the rates, hence the latter has no escape. 2. Landlords owning residential property will invariably have their rates reduced, because their houses are buliU close together, with no snare ground. Why should these landlords escape at the expense of the business people f They certainly will not reduce the rents to their tenants. 3. If the poll be carried, it will encourage people to build on every inch of their ground, as the more back yard a man has the more rates no will nave to pay4. If the poll be carried, it will mean that the buildings of the future will go upwards for several stories- It cannot be healthy to have these huge buildings, perhaps filled with workers, in the centre of a city like Wellington, with its narrow streets. (By J. J. Devine.) Sir.—l notice that several writers co the Press on the s ubject of the proposed change of city rating state that the rate on the unimproved capital value will be 3 5-64 d in the pound, as against the present 2s 6fd in the pound on the annual value. These writers have, howovor, overlooked the -water rate, which is an additional lOd in the pound, and they also seem to be ignorant of the fact that this and certain other "rate s —.hospital and charitable aid for one — cannot, as the law now stands, he levied on the unimproved value, but must continue to be raised as at present on the annual value. So if the proposal for rating on the unimproved value be carried in Wellington, there will have to be had separate valuation lists for the city ; with all the duplicate machinery to give effect thereto, and this will entail a considerable increase in the expenses of the city valuation departments. Rating on unimproved values is unquestionably an equitable system, aud if the law were amended so that all rates should be levied under it, it would find more general favour. To have separate modes of rating in Wellington will only lead to expense and confusion. The Government intended to remedy this anomaly by the amending Act it introduced this session. but after the big defeat in Auckland a few months ago of the proposal, the Government dropped its Bill.

RATING UNIMPROVED VALUES. ,■ (By Samuel Vaile.) Let all those who contemplate voting on unimproved values to-day remember that they will be really voting for single tax. Let them ask themselves who it is that worked this movement up, and what has been their real object in doing So. They will find that it is the work of the single tax leaders, and that their sole object is through it to introduce their dishonest scheme of robbery and plunder. I do not know any of the southern single tax leaders, but in Auckland they are all traders, and they only require a small piece of land for a trading site. They have been accustomed to pay rent, and appear to think that single tax will give them low rents, and above all things will abolish Cuftoms duties, and enable them to import dutv free all the cheap products and manufactures of China, Japan, India. Germany, American gaols, etc., etc. This might suit, the traders; but how about our own workers ? Before proceeding further, it may be as well to consider how rating on unimproved values will affect a particular city, say, Wellington, and its inhabitants. The law prescribes that the rate struck must bo such as will produce a capital sum equal to the revenue of the city for the preceding year, and as I under stand the law, this rate is fixed thus for the next three years, and consequently the income of the city remains stationary for four years. I do not know what rate in the £ will be required in Wellington, but in Auckland it was 3|d. Now, the proposition is to tax the whole area site of the city, improved and unimproved land alike, at this rate, that is to say, at a certain fixed rate in the £. Therefore, it is obvious that the amount so raised ig thq utmost that can be obtained from the city at that rate. It is to be* hoped that during the next three years Wellington _ will increase greatly, but under this ridiculous system of rating, no matter how it may increase in population and wealth, not one penny would he added to its income. Suppose during the first year one thousand new houses were v built, these would not add one copper to the city revenne, but. they would add very 'argely to its expenditure. Where is this to come, from ? Clearly the city .must run into debt, and at the end of the three years a new rat e will have to be struck, and either the rate per £ greatly increased, or the value of the land forced uo to a fictitious amount. Citizens should remember that the

object of the leaders of this movement is not to raise city revenue, but to steal the land from its present owners as rapidly as possible. These people tell us that their syg. tem is just, and that it will help the poor and make the rich pay a fairer share. Let us see. I have noticed that in Wellington, in Molesworth street and elsewhere, there are allotments with very poor houses on them, evidently the homes of working people, and close alongside there are houses of the wealthy on land of precisely the sa'me value, and of the same area. Under the proposed system the man who can only afford to live in a house worth £BO to £IOO would have to pay precisely the same taxation as the man whose house costs £2OOO. This is the single taxer’s idea of justice and helping the poor. It is not mine. In this city there are many such cases. I iremomber that in what is now a fashionable street, a working man owns half an acre. He is a very worthy follow. and is much respected by his weal, thier neighbours. He has a- poor cottage, hut a large, good garden. This the single taxers want to force him to sell, so that it may be closely built, upon. So they greatly increase his taxation. This man’s next neighbour is a wealthy professional '.man. He .has precisely tho same size piece of land, but on it he has two large and good houses. In one he resides, the other ho lets, so they very greatly reduce his taxation, while they pile it on to his poor neighbour. Single tax justice! Single tax help to the poor man! Let me give a word of warning to Wellington leaseholders—those renting reclaimed and other land. Let them remember that the proposal is to tax them on tho freehold value of the land they occupy. This will very largely increase their rentals, for no doubt their lea-see compel them to pay the rates. (By Jag. Grove, Secretary Single Tax League,) Does Mr Yaile suppose that the movement for the taxation of laud values that is making such progress throughout the world can be arrested by appeals to the ignorance and prejudices of tho people, such as ho has made in Ms letter which appeared in one of your issues recently? iras he nothing better to say against the single taxers than to tell us that our methods for carrying out “our scheme of spoliation” are “crafty, insidious, subtle, and utterly unprincipled?” Dare hb tell us straight out that Henry George was an unprincipled man, or that Cardinal Manning (than whom a better man never lived) was unprincipled when he preached the doctrine, in season and out of season, that land values were tho natural prevision made by Providence for the supply of all public needs and requirements, and so admirably .arranged that they rose just in proportion as these public needs became more and more pressing ? Will Mr Vaile dare tell us that Cardinal Manning’s methods were crafty, subtle and unprincipled when ho preached this doctrine in the most outspoken and straightforward manner possible? Surely no one could mistake his meaning when he spoke as follows: That ground rent, land values, rent of land, or whatever else it may be called, is the property of the community, and should he taken by the community to satisfy all public! needs and requirements, in lieu of the unjust taxes now levied on the products of labour. And there is hot the slightest ambiguity about the quotation Mr Yaile gives us from “Progress and Poverty” (and in giving this quotation Mr Vaile contradicts his own statements') especially when ho quotes what Henry George says:—“He would take the kernel and leave the landlords the shell.” Nothing could be plainer than that I should think. The truth is, that no man was ever more uncompromising in his principles and actions than Henry George, for neither friend nor foe could bend him from saying what ho meant in the plainest’and most unmistakable way possible, and that he was not mistaken is proved by the way ho brought down on himself the thunder of the great “Times” and the anathemas of the reviews and magazines, and the venomous manner in which the critics of twenty or more years ago attempted to crush him and hound him down from ever speaking again. But the storm nagsed on and exlteusted itself, and the fospel of glad tidings preached by Henry George lived, and continues to live to this day and his works are now translated into every European language, and are spreading the light in every corner of the earth —the light that is troubling Mr Vaile just now, and causing him to launch his thunders on the headset the single taxers and cxemptors of improvements in local rating in New Zealand. But Mr Yaile is evidently not aware that the single tax has outlived the stormy period of its existence in Wellington, some ten or twelve years ago. and has now became quite respectable. When ■ the doctrine was first mooted in the Wellington Press it led to many heated controversies and much correspondence, and the single taxers of that time had to hear the brunt of the abuse and name-oalling that their opponents heaped upon them. Hut our single tax lived it through, and if we did not convert everyone into a single taxer, almost everyone was led to see the injustice of taxing buildings and other improvements. And now one reference more to the quotation from Henrv George about “taking the kerne and leaving the landlords the shell. ’ The fact is he would leave them a good

deal more than the shell, for ho pars h* would take no more than was neoes. sary. and would leave the balance in their hands to make it worth their while to act as rent collectors for the Government, and so save the expense of a Government department for this purpose. But Mr Vaile is evidently above knowing the truth, and sat isfies "himself with abusing the other side, and draw, ing all sorts of fancy pictures from his imagination of the evils of single taxism without a tithe of evidence to support his .statements. In conclusion, 1 would remind Mr Vaile of the fact, which I have no doubt he is well aware of, that the single tax movement is not being carried on by the real and greatest sufferers from land monopoly, the landless and house, less masses—the industrial classes—for they are too much embrutod with toil to study economic questions and know what is the matter. Tho fact is, it is the property-owners and wealthy, tho scholarly and well-to-do classes, including a number of the landed aristocracy of England, and such men as Tom L. Johnston, tho American millionaire, Garrison Lloyd, of America, and a largo proportion of the clergy of all denominations, that are carrying on tho single tax propaganda throughout tho world. I am sure 1 shall not he expected to answer all the rash and wild statements Mr Vaile has made, and I shall now dismiss the subject with the hope that I have said, enough to bring Mr Vaile to a more reasonable and hotter state of mind, and that he will he more careful in tho future how ho defames the single tax movement and 'its advocates.