TAXATION ESCAPED.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 228, 26 September 1929, Page 11

TAXATION ESCAPED.

LARGE LANDOWNERS POSITION i HON. W. D. STEWART EXPLAINS TIMES WERE TROUBLOUS. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. ,! It has been stated by the Prime Minister that through the peculiar position of the land and income tax law a class of large landowner in the Dominion has j been able to escape payment both of land and income tax, and that that class has I thus failed to pay its share of inci eased obligations due to the war. Sir Joseph Ward, in his speech in the House yesterday, again raised this point, urging that this section should be just and pay its ! fair share of the country's obligations. Mr. Dowie Stewart, former Minister of Finance, also referred to this point, remarking that if Sir Joseph Ward was correct then it might be said that he, as Minister of Finance for many years, might be blamed for not applying a remedy. "My answer is that throughout the whole time the farmer was going through hard times, facing falling prices and conditions of economic disadvantage,

which would have been accentuated if any attempt had been made to revise their taxation," said Mr. Stewart He argued that if a survey of the laudiwners' income was taken over a long period it would be found that although he might make a large income one year, in other years he paid his taxation out of capital. On a five or ten-year average the abnormal profits said to have been obtained did not loom up at all. While he was Finance Minister he was constantly receiving letters from landowners, complaining bitterly that their land tax was in excess of their income and they were paying taxation out of capital. Whether this was so or not, no evidence was adduced by the Prime Minister to support his statement, and it might well have been left in abeyance till the income tax demands from the large landowners had shown the real position. The large landowner had always expressed a preference for income tax, but the problem was where the line should be drawn, as most small farmers preferred land tax, which they considered less troublesome, with less chance of evasion. The difficulty was that uliile one farmer paid income tax he had an immediate grievance if his neighbour over the fence, by good fortune got three times his income, but did not pay income tax on it.