THE VICTORIAN LAND TAX.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5240, 9 January 1878, Page 3

THE VICTORIAN LAND TAX.

The Pall Mall Gazette of October 26 says: —“ Mr. Berry, the new Chief Secretary in Victoria, has introduced his Bill for imposing exceptional taxation on the proprietors of large landed estates in that colony. The Bill, as it at present stands, differs very little from that which lie brought in two years ago, and, much to the annoyance of his more violent supporters, the system of ‘cumulative’ taxation in proportion to the size of the holding has been abandoned. This plan was advocated prior to the elections as the only means of speedily breaking up the large properties. The taxation will, nevertheless, fall heavily enough on the 1500 or 2000 people who are the owners of large estates, and when added to the onerous local burdens will probably, it the Bill is carried, have the effect desired by Mr. Berry, of throwing a good deal of moderate land into the market. The various holdings are divided into four classes, at £4, £3, £2, and £1 an acre, and all holders of land of a higher capital value than £2500 are to pay 1J per cent, upon that capital value. In this way of course the best land in the colony gets off with a comparatively light taxation, but hind which is really worth the price at which it is rated and no more will suffer a very high taxation indeed. Becent purchasers in particular will feel this severely. Improved real estate cannot now be purchased in Victoria to pay more than 5k to 6 per cent, if so much. Any one therefore who has lately paid a considerable sum for moderate land will find that, as Sir James McCulloch calculates, he will be mulcted at the rate of from 13 to 16 per cent on his income. That there should be some exemptions is not unreasonable, and there is at any rate a precedent for them in the mode in which the income tax is levied at Home ; but it is not denied that in the present instance the exemptions are made not for the sake of relieving the burden on the poor, but to increase the impost on the rich. There is little likelihood that the Bill will pass the Legislative Assembly without some alteration, and at first, at any rate, the Legislative Council will reject it bodily. Of the unfortunate circumstances which have produced an ill-feeling between the large landowners and the people in Victoria we have frequently spoken, and there can he little doubt that had the former been wiser in their generation the existing bitterness would never have arisen. Meantime it appears that free-trade doctrines are slowly making way, and the free-trade party have by no means lost heart by their defeat at the late elections. These constant wranglings in Victoria tend, we think, to draw more than the fair share of public attention to that colony, and sometimes occasion singular mistakes. Even Mr. Fawcett, in his lecture at Cambridge, spoke of protection in Australia as if Victoria represented the whole continent, and the Saturday Reviero the other day made the same blunder. The most prosperous colony in Australia at this moment, New South Wales, has fully adopted free trade, and there is every sign that South Australia will do tho same ; while in neither of those two colonies nor in Queensland is there the sharp conflict between the democracy and the ‘ squattocraoy ’ that has at various times occasioned so great a ferment in Victoria.”