THE PROPERTY TAX.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2355, 20 October 1881, Page 3

THE PROPERTY TAX.

[press association telegram.] WELLINGTON, October 19,

Circulars are being issued by the Property Tax Department drawing attention to the fact thst the passing of the Property Assessment Act Amendment Act, 1881, has rendered it necessary to obtain from some owners statements of additional property, and also in regard to the deductions to be allowed, not now allowed, but which were previously allowed. A statement of the real property for which an owner hag already been assessed is not required. Owners need not include shares in banks, insurance, coal mining, gold mining, manufacturing, and other limited or incorporated companies, but shares in building societies should now be included the societies themselves being now exempt. Uncalled capital on shares in banking, insurance, or other companies must not bo deducted as a liability of a shareholder. The provision of the Act of 1879 that property should be valued at what it might be expected to bring if offered at public auction for cash has been repealed. By section 8 of the Act of 1881, it is provided that property and all interests in property shall be assessed at “ the full value of the same if sold for cash at the date to which the statement relates.” This also applies to all interest in personal property. A check upon the values returned by owners is afforded by clause 13 of the Act of 1881, which gives power to the Government to take the property at the owner’s valuation, with 10 per cent, added at the date at which the property is to be valued. Section 7 provides that statements “shall bo made as if at twelve o’clock noon on the first of October last previous to the date on which they are respectively required to be made.” The attention of stock-owners is particularly requested to the alteration in the time at which property is to bo valued. In making a deduction for debts, strict attention should be given to clause 11. Purchasers of wool, grain, other produce, or merchandise which had been imported before the Ist of October must not deduct not the amount of bills given in payment thereof, or balances of open accounts due in respect of such purchase. A liability in respect of goods which had not arrived in the colony on the Ist of October, unless the value of the goods is returned as an asset, must not be deducted.

All persons who,on the Ist Ootober, held goods consigned to them mutt include such goods in their own assets ond pay tax upon them unless the person by whom they are consigned has in the colony an agent responsible for the payment of the property tax, and the consignee supplies the name and address of such agent to the commissioner, and the commissioner is satisfied with the proof of agency. The agents for absentees, trustees under marriage or other settlements, guardians of minors, trustees of assigned estates, &c., have to make returns of property in the name of the trusts which they represent, failing which they are liable to penalties.