COLONIAL TAXATION.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume IX, Issue 452, 7 February 1867, Page 3

COLONIAL TAXATION.

[Nelson Examiner.] The experience of most people will enable them to call to mind some confirmed invalid to whom a state of ill-health has become a second nature. We know the mild superiority with which such persons regard the sufferings of ordinary mortals, as things that are pretty well for mere beginners, but are hardly worthy of serious consideration by the thoroughly matured martyr to ill health. This experience max form a not unapt illustration of the condi lion of the tax payers of this colony. Of course tax-payers, like invalids, show their 'various natural tendencies in their wav of |treating their sorrows. There is the exultant tax-payer, like Mr. Jollie, who thinks it positively a fine thing to bi groaning under more taxes than any other civilised race of men ; just as there is the exultant invalid, who will meekly rehearse his aches and pains with a gusto and relish which his or her listeners can rarely share The exultant tax-payer and the exhuberant invalid are, howe- er, comparatively rare specimens. It is much more common to find each class represented by people who grumble and bemoan their hard fate, but who very often will not, or cannot, exert themselves to shake oil’ the disease. This, wo say, is very common, and in the matter of tax-paying it is quite the rule of New Zealand. At this moment, it may be, that Mr. Jollie, and a few men of like mind, are more delighted than ever at the weight of taxes Ave bear without absolutely sinking under them ; but this is not a general feeling in the colony. One long, low growl of concentrated dissatisfaction expresses the all but universal conviction that there is a screw loose somewhere in our arrangements. Hitherto the growl, however long, has been so very low that it has produced no effect, unless to add a pleasant excitement to the task which each new Colonial Treasurer for some years back has set himself of raising the Tariff and imposing a few new taxes on the settlers. For our own part we think it lime that something louder and more impressive were tried by the people, because we cannot help seeing that otherwise the evil will g# on increasing even beyond its present monstrous proportions.

Before attempting to enter upon the very wide and important question of our taxation and how it should be treated, it will be as well to glance briefly at our position at present. In Kew Zealand there are now about 200,000 tax-paying men, women, and children. There can bo very little doubt that this year these 200,000 will pay, in hard cash, taxes for the General Government of the colony to the amount of £1,200,000, or £6 per head. We say nothing at present of the provinces, because it is better to begin at the root of our subject, and that root unquestionably is the central power of the colony, supported, as we are bound to believe it is, by all the wisdom the colony can produce. To this General Government then, we say, there will be paid this year £1,200,000 in taxes by 200, (X)0 souls of a population. It is worth while to pause a few seconds to consider what these figures really meau. Six pounds a year is nearly two shillings and fourpence a week: and when it is considered there are not less than four individuals, on an average, depending on SlTigla ‘Wfirknl*. ‘VTfi e?Ct thv startling result that each head of a family pays on an average 9s. 6d. per week to the General Government of the colony! To’

the labouring man with his 30s. per week of wages (and this is a high average for the whole colony), this is rather a serious consideration we should say, and wo think it high time he should understand why it is his 30s. here go little farther than his 12s. did in England. Bat it may be said this is not a fair view of the case because the rich pay more and the poor less than we have -aid. This wg know is a highly popular theory with soma people, and believe it to be a highly erroneous and therefore dangerous one. For, we ask. What is it that is taxed in this country ? It is not incomes, and it is not property; therefore the great distinctions between our richer and poorer classes does not form the basis of our taxation. There is no tax upon wool or upon sheep runs, but there are very heavy taxes on the tea and sugar, on the tobacco and the beer, on the clothes we wear and the tools we use in our daily work. The proportion of people who are of a luxurious class here is too small to make it worth while to tax luxuries highly, or at least to look for much revenue from, such taxation. It is upon the things in daily and hourly use by the 20(J,0tX) settlers, most of them poor and struggling, that the duties are placed that are to yield this enormous return —and wisely too, if the return must be brought up to its present proportions.

But we may be told that if this hugo sum is realised this year, it will exceed our requirements, and wo shall have a handsome balance at our banker’s at the end of it. We do not believe a word of this, and we have good cause to disbelieve it on the authority of experience. If the taxes raise more money than was spoken of by the Ministry in the House, they will not, we feel certain, realise more than that Ministry secretly hoped to get all along. We can well imagine the cloud of words in which the Colonial Treasurer will wrap his congratulations to the House at its next session, if ho has ever so minute a balance in hand ; and the object of that will be to make it appear as if the Government had done something wonderful in not running into debfi We say this with confidence now, because the thing has happened before, and the result has never varied. This, then, is our position, and, we repeat, it is far too serious a one to be treated by a mere discontented growling, such has as failed for years back to check this growing evil of taxation. We are now paying for ourselves, our wives, and our children, nearly half-a-crown each per week towards the expense of governing this colony. We cannot eat or drink without contributing to the revenue; we cannot wear clothes, or use tools, without paying a large share of the price into the Treasury at Wellington. Do as we will, live as poorly as we may, we are unable to escape the tax-ga-therer here, who takes from us not in proportion to our means, but to our needs. This, we say, is the plain truth of our posidon, and it is not a sudden tiling which may depart as quickly and imperceptibly as it arose. By no means. Year by year this has been built up by careful hands, Examination, such as we mean to give to (lie subject, and such as we iuvite every newspaper and every man in the colony to give to it also, will show how excellent a reason can be given for every one of the thousand and one payments, in which our hardly-earned £1,200.000 so speedily disappears. It is only by following up such an enquiry as this through all its windings —and they are not a few—that we can at ail grasp the idea of the dilliculties we have to encounter in dealing with this insatiable monster of Government expenditure. Wo are, however, convinced that this is now' the question of the day. Other questions —native questions, war questions, goldfields questions —have overshadowed this one, and it has grown up to a most healthy maturity in the shade, like manv another noxious plant. Surely the time lias come to attend to this ; surely the people may now be persuaded—oven if the Government will not—to demand an examination. into the question, and, if possible, a reformation of the abuse.