LAND TAX DUE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 68, 13 December 1907, Page 3

LAND TAX DUE.

GRACE EXPIRES TO-DAY. To-day and to-morrow will be busy days for tho Land and Income Tax Department. Land tax was duo on November 29, and tho fourteen days of grace allowed for payment terminate to-day. All payments made by post in letters which bear to-day's post-mark will bo accepted by tho Department. After that tho 10 per cent, penalty will ho enforced. Land tax is an old exaction, and not many people nowadays aro sufficiently heedless to incur the penalty, but there aro many who put oft' the evil day fpr payment till the extreme limit of grace is reached, and so tho Department will no nloubt experienco a Danajan shower during tho last days of this week. • j The tax is levied on tho unimproved value of land, £500 exemption being allowed. The ,exemption is subject to a sliding process after £1500, and disappears at £2500. Thus if a man has property of an unimproved value of £101)0, the amount is treated for taxatioii purposes as follows:—Tlio amount of £500' is deducted as exempt, tlio amount of mortgages against the property is deducted and any money which the owner may have lent out on mortgago is added. The tax amounts to one penny in thc'£ on land, and three-farthings in tile pound 1 on mortgages. ' If the balance, after allowing for mortgages is £1502, the exemption is not £500, but £409. One pound is takeu off the exemption for every £2 of value over £1500.. After 1 £2500 there is no exemption. At £5000 unimproved value, tlio graduated land tax begins, and in respect of this tho new Act passed last session comes into force tliis year,, 'with the exception of ono clause, which provides for the increase, two years hence, of the new progressive graduated scale over £40,000 by 25 per cent, in the case, of all land other than "business premises" under the Act. Under the new Act the former scale of graduated land tax is continued up to £40,000, unimproved value, but beyond that the scale is repealed and a now rate is imposed. From £40,000 to £41,000, unimproved value, the' rato is Bs. per cent., and i'or every additional £1000 of unimproved value the rate is increased by one-fifth of a shilling; the increased rate in each graduation is chargeable on'the total unimproved value of land owned. ' The rato reached its .maximum at £200,000, all estates of that value and over paying at the rato of £2 per cent, on the total unimproved value. \ As in the principal Act the graduated tax is increased by 50 per cent, in the caso of absentees, but a new definition of an absentee is given, and it is made clear that the absentee tax does not apply to companies, but does apply to shareholders in companies. A person is now deemed to be an absentee " unless he has been personally present in New Zealand for at least one-half of tho , period of four years' immediately preceding the year in and for which he is assessed for graduated land tax: Provided that no person who hits acquired all his land in New Zealand within' the said period of four years snail be deemed to be an absentee if ho has been personally present in New Zealand for at least one-half of the period which has elapsed between the time when he first acquired any of that land and the commencement of the year in and for which he is assessed for] graduated land tax.'' Thero are a number of clauses for preventing tho eviision of tho graduated land tax.