Rangitikei Advocate TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 8841, 18 June 1907, Page 2

Rangitikei Advocate TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1907. SECOND EDITION. EDITORIAL NOTES

MR McNAB has always been couistlered a particularly honest and straightforward man, but those who hare followed his speeches iu the laud campaign must have noticed a marked and growing deterioration iu his regard for the liner shades of truth. At Stratford ho said that ho had had all the methods adopted by the largo owners of evading taxation analysed, and the officer of the Department had examined iutoevery way hy which these owners -were evading the tax, and all the methods that had been devised hy lawyers to prevent laud settlement,- Oup of the most interesting documents devised was: one for a largo owner to Kell his property to somo man who might bo in his employ at a price enormously In excess of the real valuation; The sum paid down £o, and on a valuation of #IO,OOO gavo’ft

mortgage of £9893, bearing interest at 5 per cent. After tlie mortgage tho purchaser gave the real owner a lease of it and passed over the laud again to him at the same rent as the interest on the mortgage, and they were quits. The tax was evaded, and tho large owner held his finger to his nose and defied the Taxation Pepartment- This kind of evasion had never yet been dealt with, but the Government proposed to deal with it on the graduated tax principle. No doubt most of Mr McNab’s audience gathered from this statement, as they were intended to do, that the plan described had actually been put into practice by one or more landholders, but it will ho observed that the Minister does not definitely assert this and an examination of; the ingenious scheme shows that it would be of little advantage to anyone. The fictitious proprietor as owner of laud valued at £IO,OOO would pay laud tax and graduated tax at the rate of one penny and three sixteous in the £ ami tho holder of the mortgage would be charged the mortgage tax of %d iu the £. Of course both these sums., would come out of the pocket of the real owner and he would in effect pay a tax of 2d less one sixteenth of a penny. Au examination of the rates of graduated tax shows that unless the proprietor owned more than £50,000 worth of laud lie would he a loser by the scheme, while if ho had laud to tho value of £IOO,OOO ho would save somewhere about £SO per annum. He would be a very curious landholder who for the sake of saving £SO per annum would give one of of hia employees a title to £IO,OOO worth of laud, a title moreover which would enable the supposed owner to sell the laud if ho could get a good enough price for it. The Minister of Lands would doubtless explain if confronted with these facts that he was merely quoting a suppositions case, hut we believe that general opinion will support our contention that no politician is Justified iu attempting to deceive his hearers by the use of arguments of this nature.