ANOTHER PROTEST.

Observer, Volume XXVII, Issue 39, 15 June 1907, Page 2

ANOTHER PROTEST.

Rating on Unimproved Values

SOME of the communities that so thoughtlessly and recklessly

adopted the principle of rating on unimproved values are already bitterly repenting their experimental precipitancy. The latest example is furnished by the comparatively new suburb ot Miramar, in close proximity to Wellington. Speaking at a public function last week, the Mayor of that borough said that rating on unimproved values taxed industries, and also the working man who had a building of small value on high-priced land; at the same time, it let oft the big merchant and the uotelkeeper and put the tax on to industry and the working njan. He thought it was a bad thing in every way for the district. It let off something like £100,000 worth of property in the district, and he did not think it encouraged building in the slightest degree.

The Mayor of Miramar has discovered something that has been apparent to many other thoughtful people since the introduction of rating on unimproved values was first proposed in this colony. The system relieves from taxation many wealthy individuals and corporations who ought not to escape, and, in doing so, doubles and even trebles the burden on those who already are sufficiently taxed. it is a system that directly violates the sound principle of political economy, that the earning power of a property is the only fair basis of taxation. The sole tenable argument in its favour, so far as colonial communities are concerned, is that it accomplishes a decided step towards the single tax, but this is an argument that will not find much sympathy outside the rankß of the single taxers.

The astonishing thing about rating on unimproved values is that wbereever it has been adopted in this colony the change has been made with the aid of the working classes. With a remarkable disregard of their own intex - ests, the working classes have failed to detect in this system a cunning device of the wealthy citizen to shift the taxation from his own'shoulders on to those of his poorer neighbours. Nevertheless, this is the fact. Wiih the taxation on the land solely, the owners of the £200 cottage and the £2000 mansion pay precisely the same rates. And yet this is a system for which a section of the working classes, misled by plausible and smooth-tongued single taxers, have been clamouring in the belief that they are assisting in the direction of social reform.

What is the use of a labouring man or mechanic endeavouring to secure a section and build his own cottage in a district where the land is saddled with the taxation that should be paid by the mansions of the wealthy? The single taxers say that rating on unimproved values has increased the number of bouses. Apart from the mansions that have been erected under the system, because of the immunity from rating, it has only increased the number of cottages where the owner was compelled to sub-divide in order to earn his land rents, and in these cases the class of tenements constructed are of the type that may be styled cheap and undesirable.

There has recently been an outcry in labour circles against high rents. But hpw can the rents be other than high when the cottage is compelled to pay the rates of the mansion ? , This is a question that requires thoughtful consideration. Grey Lynn and Devonport have both furnished us with telling examples of the inequality of the system, which bear 9 harshly on the poor, and enables the owners of large and costly buildings to escape the greater share of their fair taxation. Evidently, the experience of Miramar has been similar, or the Mayor of that borough would not have spoken as he did. It is certainly significant that the strong advocates of rating on unimproved values, almost without exception, live in large and costly houses. They know which aide their bread is buttered on, even if the working classes do not.