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Waipawa Mail, Volume 2, Issue 116, 22 October 1879, Page 2

The finances of the colony are in an admittedly bad state. Major Atkinson calculates that the income for the current year will fall short of the expenditure by £003,000. It is true this deficiency does not yet. exist, but that at the end of tho present financial year there will be a largo deficiency, is allowed by both sections of the House. How to cover that deficiency is tho question which our representatives must set themselves to work out. Increased taxation would press very hardly on many just now, with every industry paralysed, and every branch of trade suffering from a depression. But better have increased taxation, and live within our income, than go on slowly but surely piling up nn enormous debt by the issue of Treasury Deficiency Bills. A tax on incomes has been suggested as tho fairest way of taxing every mail according to his means. There is no fax that the brain of man has yet been able to discover that will not press unduly on some portion of tho community, but a tax on all incomes over £3OO a year should reach all, in proportion to their wealth, exempting those who, from the comparative smallness of their income, might fairly lay claim fo exemption from this tax. Such a tax would reach a largo class of investors in public companies of various kinds, of well-to-do clerks and others, who at present contribute almost nothing to the general revenue of tho colony. A tax on income would in a measure clash with the land tax. Landowners could not be asked to pay a tax on their land, and again a tax on their income, tho greater part of which would be derived from the land. But in the case of those contributing to the laud tax, it would not be difficult to deduct the amount derivable from their land from their total income, and thus arrivo at an amount upon which income tax could with fairness be charged. In order to lighten tho burdens borne by the Colonial Chest, it is expected that the subsidies to local bodies will be discontinued, at any rate, after next year. This will, of course, relieve the Consolidated Fund, but will not benefit the country otherwise. AYe shall either have to put up with worse roads and bridges, or else increase local taxation to make good ones.