The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwiea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1895. LAND TAXATION.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 21, 24 July 1895, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oroua & Kiwiea Counties Gazette. Published Daily. WEDNESDAY, JULY 24, 1895. LAND TAXATION.

It is a singular contradiction that while the Government pretend to be most anxious to get people to settle on the land, they at the same time exhibit such an apparently uncontrol able desire to burden all land ownfrs whether great or small with extra taxation. The latest evidence of this is found in the Bill entitled " An Act to authorise Eating on the Unimproved Value of Land," introduced by the Hon Mr Ward, which is now being debated in the House. We contend that the land owners, especially in such districts as those comprised in the Eangitikei, Manawatu, Kiwitea, and Pohangina Counties and the Manchester Eoad District, have already placed sufficiently heavy burdons on their own shoulders by borrowing money to make roads and bridges under the Government Loans to Local Bodies Act. It may be true that by doing so they have enhanced the value of their land, but supposing they have that is no reason why a punitive rating Bill should be passed against them. In the House last night Sir Kobert Stout made a telling point when he said that the Bill 11 would make an owner of poor land pay more taxation than the owner of good land, and it would tend to create slums in the cities." If land owners were makiug good interest on the money they have invested — and by the w"ay it must not be forgotten that each and all of ihem had to pay "top" prices for their holdings — with very few exceptions they could better afford to pay the proposed now tax, but the fact is that owing to the low prices of stock and the depression in the value of wool which has obtained for the last two seasons, they are not in a position to do so. They have also high rates of interest to pay on money borrowed during the " good times " and which remain at the same level always notwithstanding the fluctuations in the markets on which they depend to find the money to pay such interest. It is not only a blunder but a crime to tax the land for everything.