THE VICTORIAN LAND TAX.

Otago Witness, Issue 1419, 1 February 1879, Page 14

THE VICTORIAN LAND TAX.

In a voluminous supplement to the Government Gazette of Victoria, dated 11th. December, 1878, there has been published in Melbourne a list of all land-owners in that Colony who come within the incidence of Mr Berry's experiment at " bursting up the big estates." By the Act of 1877 all taxable land is divided into four classes, according to its estimated grazing capabilities. Land capable of carrying two or more sheep to the acre is called first-class, and is assessed at £4 per acre ; if it can carry three sheep for two acres it i 9 second-class, at £3 per acre ; if one sheep per acre it iH third-class, at £2 ; and if less than that, ii is fourth- class, at £1 per acre. The tax is threepence in the pound on this valuation, s) that first- clas3 land has to pay one shilling per acre. Exemption is allowed to the value of £2500 on the gross value of the e3tate. but no owner can olaim exemption more than once. This exemption value, therefore, covers 2500 acres of fourth-class land, but only 625 acres of first-class. For instance, the smallest estate in the list comprises an area of 670 acres 08 first-class land, but the owner pays only upon 45 acres, valued at £ISO, and his tax is £2 53 per annum. Municipal property and all estates up to an area of 640 acres are exempt from the tax altogether. With these explanations, the following summary will be readily understood :—: —

The above summary includes names that occur several times under the different classes, and some two or three times under the same class. The Hod. William John Clarke, for instance, owns six estates, comprising 164,352 acres, valued at £479 227, f"r which the annual tax payable U £5846 lla 93, «r about one-twenty-sixtb. of the entire proceeds of the land tax of the colony. Correcting for these pluraiists and rearranging the whole lisb, we may present the result in the follow'ng short table :—: —

Here are some facts worth invo3tigatiorj. Nearly ore-third of the whole taxable area is in the hands of 41 persona, and they contri bute a little more one-third of the whole proceeds of the tax, or an average of £1273 each per annum. But then they own an average area of 51,205 acres each, or 80 square miles of territory. The second-rate proprietors number 161, holding an average of 17,770 acres each, and they contribute considerably over one- third of the whole tax, averaging; each £397 per annum. The remaining 623 proprietors hold on the average 3063 acres each, and pay leas than one-fourth of the whole tax, or an average of £57 each per annum. It is evident, from these facts, that this impost falls almost entirely on " the big

estates." Two hundred persons pay threefourths of the whole amount, the other onefourth is shared by more than 600 persons, and all obher proprietors throughout the Colony of Victoria remain untaxed, although they own probably nob less in the aggregate than ten million acres.— Sydney Morning Herald.