The Failding Star. THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1888. A Tax on Bachelors

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 138, 21 June 1888, Page 2

The Failding Star. THURSDAY, JUNE 21, 1888. A Tax on Bachelors

It will be seen by a paragraph in amother column that Mr Bruce, the member for Rangitikei, wants to have a tax imposed annually of say £l per head on all bachelors between the ages of twenty-one and fifty years, and he would further pile Ossa on Pelion by making 1 them pay one halfpenny extra in the pound sterling where they have property to tax. Taking a broad view of the subject we are inclined to agree with Mr Bruce, but object to the narrow principle he would lay down. We think if such a tax were imposed it should be progressive; that is, it should begin at twenty- one years at say £10, decreasing each year as the payee became older, and as a natural consequence his chances of picking out a good wife diminished in a proportionate ratio, until he arrived at the age of thirty years, when the tax would be at its minimum. As after this period with each succeeding year the worldly circumstances of the bachelors may safely be calculated to be on the increase, it would be perfectly fair to tax them on an annually increasing scale until the origuual or piimary tax of £10 were again reached, not to be again reduced until death enclosed the victims in her chill embrace. That such an impost would drive all the best and most adventurous young men out of colony never to return, and force the idle and timid who remained into early and imprudent marriages, has nothing to -do with the question when considered from a taxation point of view. Mr Bbuoe no doubt means well, but in this case "he don't know how," or lie would have shown a better example himself.