TAXING UNEARNED INCREMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7016, 3 January 1910, Page 5

TAXING UNEARNED INCREMENT

GERMAN MUNICIPALITIES FAVOUR THE PRINCIPLE. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received January 2, 5.5 pirn.) LONDON, January 1. The ‘‘ Westminster Gazette ” reports that within a period of six weeks thirty-two German towns or communes have decided in favour of a tax on the unearned increment of land or have approved of the principle of this impost. The increment-tax is round to be so valuable in Germany : that the municipalities are absolutely opposed to any suggestion that it should go to the Imperial exchequer. At a meeting of the committee of the League of German Municipalities, the Reichstag's recent resolution with- 1 regard to an eventual Imperial increment tax was adversely criticised. This resolution, provides for an Imperial increment of not less than £1,000,000 a year,-and also that municipalities which had an increment tax Un force on April Ist shall, receive for five years after the introduction of the Imperial increment tax an amount equivalent to the average revenue which they obtained from their unearned increment taxes up to but not after April Ist last year. 1 As municipalities which now introduce unearned increment taxes would thus bo entitled to no ultimate compensation, the Berlin authorities desire to test the ability of the Empire to Appropriate this obviously elastic form . of taxation.