LAND VALUATION

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19378, 16 July 1937, Page 6

LAND VALUATION

INVISIBLE IMPROVEMENTS NEW SYSTEM WANTED FARMERS' PROPOSALS (Special to tho Herald.) WELLINGTON, this day. A motion that the system of land valuation be amended so as to give a more equitable system of arriving at the unimproved value for land tax, sent to the Dominion conference of the New Zealand Farmers' Union as a remit from North Taranaki, was adopted by the conference yesterday. Mr. R. O. Montgomerie (Wangamii) who has taken a special interest in the accountancy of farming and primary production, criticised the present system of land valuation, remarking that he had done so at the interprovincial conference at Dannevirke also. It was apparent, he said, that the selling value of land formed the basis of Government: valuations, but the practice was justified only if bona fide land sales could be justified from a profit-earning point of view. No land could be legitimately and honestly valued until the system of farm accountancy and the farmers' present and future responsibilities had been investigated. Cost of Clearing Land On perhaps the bulk of the country's farming land the cost of clearing it, or otherwise preparing it for use, would, at to-day's prices, comprise considerably more than half the value for improvements, which left little for such major improvements as grassing, fencing and erecting buildings. He asked at which stage of development the present system based its value. The costs of the work mentioned had been almost double in the last 20 years what they had been previously, and it was within the last 20 years that a considerable proportion of the cleared land had been brought into production. Replacement cost only would be the just valuation to tho.se who developed their land in later times as well as those who developed their land earlier. With the question of levying 5 per cent on the "com-munity-created value in land" being considered, an investigation of the method of valuation was urgent.

Mr. Montgomerie pointed out also that no distinction between town laud and country land was attempted. City lands could enjoy revenue from unearned increment, but the farmer received revenue from unearned increments only through his own exported produce, or, if a lessor, by adjustment of the rent. Furthermore, the value of city land did not have to be maintained by expenditure on fertiliser, as did rural land.

The president, Mr. W. W. Mulholland, supporting the remit, remarked that once the evidences of drainage or bushfelling disappeared from land its owner received no credit for those improvements. The motion was carried without opposition.