The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, DEC. 5, 1885. Taxation

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 76, 5 December 1885, Page 2

The Feilding Star. SATURDAY, DEC. 5, 1885. Taxation

The want of expansive power which the customs revenue has betrayed for some years, has made it necessary for the Government to cast about for new means of bolstering up an income which is unable to keep pace with the expenditure. The property tax is one which is collected with less trouble and at less expense than any other. If such a thing were possible, this impost may almost be called a popular one. But there are ominous signs making themselves manifest that a change is likely to take place, at no distant date, when it will be almost a burden to own any property at all unless it is actively reproductive in such a degree as to become self-sup-porting. It is proposed to widen the basis of this tax by doing away with the exemptions altogether. In writing on this subject the Canterbury Press says : — " Manifestly the plan will be to widen the basis of the property tax by abolishing all exemptions whatever. "Why should any owner of property, or any description of property, be exempted from the tax. All descriptions of property merely represent so much money, after all, and there is no reason why money should be exempted when it is invested in one way any more than when invested in another. Neither is there any reason why one class of property owners should go free when all other classes are taxed. The property tax is a perfectly fair tax, since it is levied in exact proportion to the actual wealth of each taxpayer ; and it is an absurd departure from its political, as well as its fiscal, principle to exempt a great mass of wealth, merely because it happens to be divided into small sums amongst a great many people. It is to be hoped that before any" new taxes are imposed the exemptions from property tax will be abolished altogether." The popularity of the tax with the mass of the people is because such an enormous proportion of them escape {direct taxation altogether. When every householder has to pay for his lan* A penatet he will view it from a very different point to what he does at present.