A Tax on Bachelors.

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 105, 31 October 1893, Page 3

A Tax on Bachelors.

In both Canada and New South Wales a special tax on bachelors is being seriously discussed. In the former colony the decline in the marriage rate is timed as a reason for the tax, and it is proposed to make it from £20 to £100 per annum, according to income. Whether taxing men into matrimony would be a success is at least questionable. In New South Wales, however, no such pretence is made. The proposal is merely the outcome of the financial position. More money must be raised by taxation. If increased Customs duties are levied on the necessaries of Me all heads of families will suffer while the unmarried will go comparatively free. The bachelor, it is argued, pays only the indirect taxes on what he eats or wears himself, whereas the married man has to pay for what his wife and family eat and wear, in addition to his own special burden. Therefore, to put the two on an equality a special poll-tax on bachelors is proposed. Such a Ux was actually carSed once in New Zealand. Mr Charles Brown, a one-time resident of Auckland, thus narrates the incident : — " It was before the abolition of the Provincial Governments. The Province of Auckland had passed an Education Act, and, not having the funds to carry it out, resolved in its wisdom to get them by imposing a polltax on all adult males. Tbe bachelors not unnaturally objected to paying for the education of other people's cbildron, aud opposed a passive resistance to the Act. The Government issued summonses, sold the furniture of a Catholic priest or two, and, after two years' trial, finding that tbe cost of collection was considerably in excess of the gross amount realised, dropped the tax I don't think the measure was ever repealed, but I know that I was one of tbe bachelors who never paid the tax.— Hawke's Bay Herald.