The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1885 Property Tax Exemptions.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1547, 8 July 1885, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1885 Property Tax Exemptions.

The alterations now proposed in the Property Tax are the happiest results we have observed from the Stout-Vogel combination. All the best Liberals and political economists in the House endeavoured to obtain the exemptions now proposed, when the original Bill was passing through Committee, but Major Atkinson blindly and obstinately resisted them. With a House and a country almost equally divided between a Land and a Property Tax it would be a great folly to be constantly vacillating from the one to the other; and thus a great danger will be obviated by striking out those objectionable features of the present Property Tax, which bear so heavily on machinery and improvements, without falling into the greater and opposite danger of Sir George Grey’s Land Tax, which practically exempted the towns and cities from taxation, and left the burden to be borne almost without assistance, tw ithe country districts. We also rejowb in the change as a proof of a more intelligent view of their own interests, which seems now, for the first time, to have dawned upon the Protectionists and manufacturers of the colony. Instead of helping them to keep up high prices, which would inpoverish their customers and would strictly confine them to the Home market, the exemption of machinery from taxation will cheapen their produce to all, and help them to compete, without excessively low priced labor, in the market of the world.