RATING SYSTEMS.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 December 1934, Page 4

RATING SYSTEMS.

From one point of view or another local rates and rate systems have been very much before the public in recent years. The Dunedin Chamber of Commerce has, however, drawn attention to what it considers a weakness in the system as defined in the Rating Act. The Act provides the machinery for deciding whether rating shall be on capital or on unimproved value. At present a poll can be demanded by 15 per cent, of the ratepayers concerned provided three years have elapsed since the date of the last poll. In Taranaki there has been in Recent years little use made of the power to requisition a poll for this purpose, but in other parts of the Dominion the exercise of the powers conferred by the Rating Act has, it is said, led to unnecessary expense and has caused inconvenience and uncertainty to the commercial community to whom an alteration in the system of rating may mean a good deal. The Dunedin Chamber of Commerce suggests that before a rating system poll is granted the requisition should be signed by at least 25 per cent, of the ratepayers, and that the minimum period between polls should be increased to seven years. That the subject should have been thought worthy of discussion is an indication that views on rating have undergone some change. At one time rating or unimproved value was accredited with all the virtues by its exponents. It would prevent, it was said, the absorption of the “unearned increment” on land by rapacious individuals, it would lead to decentralisation of population, and, to the extremist, it was clearing the way to ultimate land nationalisation. Experience has shown, however, that rating on unimproved values has brought problems in its train, and that it is possible that more effective means than that system for checking greed and land aggregation might be devised. If such an intricate problem is to be settled by the ballot box it is not unreasonable to ask that disturbers of existing arrangements should show they have convinced a reasonable number of ratepayers that a change is desirable, and that when a poll has been held the verdict it records should be respected for a reasonable period.