DIRECT TAXATION.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 225, 13 September 1878, Page 2

DIRECT TAXATION.

To the Editor of the, Akaroa Mail. - • the; incidence of taxation is occupying the minds of the intelligent portion of the community, I beg to submit a few ideas on the subject. The great art of taxation is to get. as much as you can, and to levy duties on those articles which are likely to be the most productive. Nowj Sir< the stamp on receipts is all' well enough, but a stamp on bills would be much better, for it has been ascertained that.receipts are rare in proportion to bills, for there are at the lowest computation at least one thousand of the latter to one of the former.' If it were compulsory on every tradesman to send in his bill upon a stamp, a much larger revenue would be collected than can be obtained under the present system, for when it is remembered how very large a class are never in the habit of seeing a receipt at all, it seems a piece of gross partiality to let the burden fall on the paying part of the public, while the , dishonest man who never settles an account, and never, therefore, gives occasion for a receipt, contributes nothing to tho public income. Society in general would also benefit by the proposed change, for tradesmen would not be so pertinacious in sending in their accounts where there is no chance of get- | ting the money, if a proper reduction in the shape of a stamp were to be put upon the very obnoxious practice. Yours, &c, ABDALLAH BENI VOGULL. Sunnyside, 1265 th year of the Hegira.