LAND VALUATION.

Otago Witness, Issue 2895, 8 September 1909, Page 5

LAND VALUATION.

At the conferences of the Farmers' Union and A. and P. Asocrations, recently held in Wellington, the question of tne present system of "land valuation in New Zealand' came up for lengthy discussion, and rightly so, "'ior from one end' of the Dominion to the other complaints a«re continually being u-acfe as to the present unsatisfactory method of landvaluing as . carried out by " the Uovernment valuers. Various schemes have lately bean put f orward as - a i-emedy for the trouble, and the opinion! of most landowners seems to be that local "bodies' should be allowed to appoint valuers', to act in conjunction witih * the officers of the Valuation Department ; but tihere is a doubt whether tfeis proposal would remove the dissctisf action or overcome the difficulty, because, as was poimbed out at the A. and P. Confisrenoe, the instructions issued / to valuers contain a distinct warning against what tohe department calls ur.der-valua.tion, which is generally interpreted to mean .that tibe land^ must be assessed at the highest possible* rate. It has become quite ftotorioufl that imx provenisnts are consistently and systematically undervalued, and that t-hie owner who is supposed to be taxed on the unimproved value does not receive anything like the allowance for his improvfements that he should. This undervaluation of improvements is obviously unfair to the land-own>ar. One of the delegates pointed out that if an owaier insured a building for half its value, and the Government valuer put the value down at half what it wasinsured for, the owner would be in a peculiar position in the event of the building being burned down. In the North Island especially is it impossible for a valuer to value improvements which he cannot see, *such j as the clearing of timber, while, on the I other hand, a man long resident in that | particular district could fairly assess i these matters. So long as a land tax exists, land -owner* sho-uk 1 be taxed fairly upon a using or income-producing basis, and 1 not the speculative value of the land. Great variation in tohe valuations of any one district are not infrequent, and for no reason other than the fact that somevaluers are guided by ttbe price realised by the latest 6are oJ "land in* the district, and take this as a standacdr in forming fcbeir valuations for surrounding kreas. There are many reasons that make a bona fide sale an exchange at a very high rate, and too much weigiht may easily be placed on it in estimating the value of an adjoining property, and in this way farmers complain that Government assess- j ments are nearly always liable to be on the side of over-valuation. The unimproved valu<a of land is not infrequently j assessed too high simply on account of situation, while too frequently little allowance i.« made for variations in the qtiality of the coil, a.n error into which a valuer of town property would be very apt to fall. The great question, however \ as regards the existing method of valuation seems to be the small value that is almost invariably allowed for improvements in buildings, plantations, live fences, etc. In the North Island com- , plaints are ma4e because in many cases wh?re the bush-cleared land has gone out ! of grass, yet the improved value for j having cleared bush was still there, j Simila.r ca?es of very inconsistent valua- • tion are to be met with in Otapo. The present system of raising the land tax may on the wihole be considered equitable, but there is little doubt that the method of arriving at the values is faulty, for , t!i.3 reason that too great a value is placed on th.c land, and too small a value on the improvements. If greater care we*© t^ken hy valuers in this direction, much of the pr<2F£iit dipeat'sfAotion would be removed. As a solution of the rlifficnltv a resolution was adopted by an AnrVland oi^t^ict brarch of the Farrrers' in th^ fd'.oviiiv: form — "That each road district .pled a ccmiirittee of three to confer with tlic lc^al ,-aluer, and to point

out disarepa&cies in fads values, sudh ooat--mitte& aaid valuer joistly to bear objections from all pereotfcj objecting to these valuations, with a view to affording an opportunity for adjustment before going to the Assessment Gcrart." The atppointing of one <x two practical fcurmers- to actin conjunction .mfch, or adviser to, the Government valuer in~ 'ca&es, of dispute would very greatly belp to remove the growing dissatisfaction "that at present prevails in connection witih the Govern- ■ ment land valuations.