NO TAXES IMPOSED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23631, 15 October 1938, Page 16

NO TAXES IMPOSED

FORTUNATE FRENCH VILLAGERS It sounds like a fairy tale, and yet it is a fact confirmed by official documents, that 24 French communes in the Jura Mountains, with a total population of about 10,000, pay no local taxes (writes Bernhard Ragner from Besancon, France, to the New York Times). Instead, each inhabitant receives a yearly dividend ranging from 100 to 200 francs. Further, there are 18 other communes—with a population of 8000— where no dividends are paid but where local taxes are non-existent. This taxless paradise is visited yearly by hundreds of tourists, both French and foreign. La Chaux des Crotenay, an attractive mountain resort, may be taken as an example. During the present century nobody has paid any local taxes in this Jura village. Instead, each inhabitant, including women and children, has collected a yearly dividend averaging 150 francs a year. Further, each family is furnished with free firewood; since the allowance is generous, half of it is usually sold and is also a dividend. If any citizen of the commune desires to build a house, he is given a free plot of ground, also free stone and free sand. Finally, the village doctor is subsidised by the commune and, according to contract, he has reduced his fees; where other doctors charge 20 to 25 francs for a visit, he charges five to ten. There are 23 other Jura villages or towns where the treasurer writes dividend cheques every year: among the names might be mentioned Grande-Riviere, Etival, Les Rousses, Bonlieu, St. Germainen-Montague, and Nozeroy. The explanation is quite simple. In years gone by these communes became the proprietors of spruce and fir woods in the vicinity; there is even an Association of Forestowning Villages. These woods are exploited in business-like fashion by each commune so well that there is a profit after all communal exoenses have been paid. Once a year the local authorities look over the accounts, figure the annual profit, and then declare a dividend.

Many square miles of Jura forest land are owned in this manner, and he villages have gone into the woodcutting and wood-selling trade. It should be explained that indirect taxes, also national taxes, both imposed by the central Government in Paris, are paid in these villages just as anywhere else. Their distinction is that they hatre abolished local taxes.