DERATING FARM LANDS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17909, 13 October 1932, Page 2

DERATING FARM LANDS

(To the Editor of the Herald.) Sir, —The principle of derating farm lands was affirmed at a recent conference in Hamilton, the idea being to make motor traffic pay road costs. - Where rating is on the basis of unimproved Values the rate tuny be regarded as a tax on land .values. Th? .American economist, Henry George. * writes as follows: “A tax on land values is. of all taxes, that which best fulfils every requirement of a t perfect, tax. As land cannot be hidden or carried off. a tax on land values can be • assessed with more certainty and can hr collected with greater ease and less expense than any other tax, while it does not in the slightest degree check production or lessen its incentive. It iin fact a tax only in form, being in nature a rent—a taking for the use o' the community of a value that arises not from individual exertion hut from the growth of the community.” A tax on motors, benzine or tyres is a tax on industry. It must be passed on, in the case of truck haulage in inrreased road freights to the owner of the goods consigned. It might pay a local farmer inclined to favor derating of land to think again before urging too drastic action. In so far as he is a producing farmer dependent on motor transport he is inakiu" a rod to beat Iris own back. As a land owner he would benefit and the larger the land owner the more benefit he would reap from the proposed alteration.—Yours,''fete., * BENZINE.