The Press Wednesday, December 10, 1930. Land Valuations.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20107, 10 December 1930, Page 10

The Press Wednesday, December 10, 1930. Land Valuations.

Most of the farmers attending the conference in Christchurcli to-day will bo interested in the decision of the Assessment Court, which, as is reported this morning, reduced the valuation of three Canterbury farm properties, on appeal, by £12,000 in all, or about 20, 14, and 12 per cent, respectively. Farmers know, and have it sharply rubbed into them by their tax demands, that the valuation of their land is unreasonable and inconsistent. They pay taxes on an assessment which may be grossly out of relation to the productive capacity ' of the area, as for several reasons it | very often is. The Valuation Department keeps an eye on land sales, which, unless they are numerous and recent and fairly comparable in class and state, are very likely to be misleading. As the Magistrate who presided over the Court pointed out. the Department tends to compare incomparables, making one assessment, (whether accurate or not) a guide to auo'lier, though of land quite different in character and capacity. Again, the Department lags behind the run of prices and in 1,030 is still Lhinking as far back as 1924. The effect of all this is to produce anomalies and inequities which cost the farmer very dear, in present circumstances disastrously dear. But, as a discussion at the annual meeting of the Agricultural and Pastoral Association last year revealed, Canterbury farmers have a special cause of complaint, since North Island lands and Canterbury lands of similar sheepcarrying capacity arc valued at rates so extravagantly different as £2 and £lO or £l2 an acre. The system under which monstrous injustices like that can occur, with lesser injustices by the hundred, has grown haphazard for over thirty years. If the consequence were merely the confusing of standards of property value, it would still be necessary to urge the Government to straighten out the confusion and rationalise the system; but when it operates as an instrument of extortion, bearing with special severity on the class in the worst distress, its inequity is an important element in the country's most important problem. It is to be hoped that full attention will be paid to it to-day in the farmers' discussion of taxation.