PROPERTY TAX.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 407, 29 June 1880, Page 3

PROPERTY TAX.

To thr. Editor of the Akaroa Mail

Silt.—ln your issue of Tuesday, the 22nd inst., Etienne Lelievre vouchsafed to explain why he is in favour of the Inquisitorial Tax that the Government is to carry into law, and referring to the meeting held on Saturday last at the Council Chambers with reference to that tax, where a resolution was passed in favour of a Land and Income Tax even below £300, he only dissenting, he goes on to say that lie would go in for the Property Tax, and reduce the exemptions from £500 to £200, and so reach, as he states, 100 per cent, more of the population that are quite able and should bear their share towards paying the taxation in the country, and points out that an Income Tax would be unfair as it would* catch professional men such as lawyers, doctors &c, that make large incomes purely from having been bom with better brains than their fellows. He infers that you might as well tax a working man that has an income but no brains. How he arrives at this conclusion must be from overeducation, for no ordinary man could be so insane as to suppose that professional men are the only men that have to use their brains. To keep the wheels of trade, agriculture, and commerce, and the wellbeing of the human race in good order, every child born commences to use its brains from its very childhood to its death or old age, and it matters not in what capacity in life it may be thrown in, unless it be an idiot born, is just as useful and capable of making lawyers or doctors or any other profession if trained to do so. There are any quantity of men in New Zealand that are not what you might term professional men or bookworms that are in business or trade, employing numbers of these workmen, combined with contracts of all sorts—nlachiriery, ships, &c, that require a hundred times-more brains to carry their work to a successful issue, and show a right balance each succeeding year, than the mere reading or studying all the lawyers' or doctors' books in. the country. They have to utilise the brain of the working man, the aitisans, and the professional men, and one is no use without the other. It is absurd to think that lawyers and doctors'- should ihe exempt from paying taxes seeing that their charges, fees, and mileage are protected by law and a sorry acquaintance to anyone. Land Tax must pay, because it is, by the expenditure of these loans and increase of population and wealth (so must increase in value), the only real- property in existence, and what everything else springs from ; all other property is destructive and continually decreasing in value.

Income Tax must pay, because it reaches the greatest number that are best able to pay if exemptions are brought to a reasonable limit.

Property Tax as proposed is too inquisitorial : there is no beginning or end to it, it is our very lives ; it is stowed away in all sorts of odd corners ; you would find it in the craniums ot lawyers, doctors, and gentlemen, for it costs £2000 to make one and a £1000 to make the other —money that was earned by their forefathers elsewhere ; and it takes three generations to make a gentleman. You would not find any capital of that sort in the craniums of what you term working men (or yet sawdust), but you would find hard experience. The tax you would advocate \yould tend to parayise all and every industry. Yourn, &c,

WILLIAM COOP.

Little River, June 21, 1880