NAPIER ITEMS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11663, 18 June 1890, Page 2

NAPIER ITEMS.

[Per United Press' Association.] Napier, June 17. Captain Preece, sitting as a Board of Review under the Property Assessment Act, yesterday heard a peculiar case. It was an objection made by Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co., to an alteration made in their property tax assessment by the Commissioner, who gave notice that he would disallow a deduction of a sum of .£25,000, which Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co. claimed to deduct as a debt due to tho Bank of Australasia in the colony. Mr Crombie, the Deputy Tax . Commissioner, appeared for the Department. The facts were clear enough and there was no dispute as to them. Prior to October 1888 Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co. drew on their London agents, Sanderson, Murray and Co., bills for an aggregate amount of 425,000, which were to be repaid by wool sent to London in the season. The bills were purchased or discounted by tho Bank, and the proceeds placed to the credit of Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co. They contended that the debt was due to tho Bank, as the firm were collaterally liable to the Bank, and that they were therefore entitled to deduct the amount. Mr Crombie urged that the debt was not to the Bank, and that Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co. had no liability to the Bank, except in the event of the bills not being honoured at maturity, and that did not entitle them to deduct Ac .£25,000 as a liability within the' colony. The case really turned on the interpretation of sub-section 3, clause 17, of the proportion of the "Assessment Act, 1885." Judgment was reserved. The Resident Magistrate yesterday gave Mr Cresswell leave to appeal in the case of Morton v. Cresswell, if he paid all costs as offered by him. Later. In giving judgment in the Property Tax case, heard yesterday, the Resident Magistrate held that Messrs Murray, Roberts and Co. must pay the tax on the sum of ,£25,0C0 in dispute, under section 15, of sub-section 3, as a liability of the firm to the Bank was only contingent on I the drafts being dishonoured, and they could not have been sned for the amount on the first of October, 1888.