THE WOOL KINGS’ TAX

Hokitika Guardian, 19 August 1929, Page 2

THE WOOL KINGS’ TAX

(Auckland Star.)

We are glad to see that Sir Joseph Ward and his colleagues are m no way perturbed by the outcry againsti the super land tax which has been raised in certain interested quarters'. Thirty-five years ago, when the Land Tax was imposed and the Lands for Settlement Act had been passed, the Conservative newspapers of the day deluged the c-ountry with denunciations of the injustice to which the landowners were subjected and prophecies of inevitable and ruinous disaster; and Liberalism to-day is passing through a very similar experience. As a matter of fact, the Hon. E. A. Ransom spoke the literal truth when he said that the few landowners who will have to pay the new super tax ought to be surprised that they have escaped so long. It is notorious that, as the .Minister of Public Works told the House last 3 bursday, a great deal of the land held in large areas is not properly worked or developed, and if the effect of the new tax facilitates the cutting-up of large estates, the United Government will have the satisfaction of increasing the country’s revenue and promoting closer settlement at due and the same time. 'As the tax starts on of £12,500 unimproved value, the average dairv farmer will not bo interfered with; and ns to mortgage exemptions, the Ministei stated that out of 80,000 farmers only 2200 will he affected, none of these owning land of loss than £(500 capital value. 'ln view of all this, the pathetic appeal of the Ecfprm Press to “pity the sorrows of the wool kings” is not likely to meet with any sympathetic response.