OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 241, 14 June 1928, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

THE LAND TAX. When the Minister of Finance, Hon. Dowmie Stewart, was asked to abolish the land tax, his reply was in the nature of an apology, an admission that the tax was purely one of expediency, though not of justice. He rather naively replied that the abolition of the tax was “ not within the range of practical politics at present,” and that it “ represents a stable source of revenue when incomes show a temporary downward and fluctuating tendency.” Undoubtedly it does, and the farmer must pay the tax irrespective of whether his farming operations have shown a profit for the year, even though companies are not under the same obligations: they are taxed on their profits mainly. The land tax is virtually a tax upon capital, and as such is indef .ibis. It is, however, rt least

g-atlfying to hear the Minister of Finance speak in the strain of his address at Auckland : confession precedes repentance and reform. Mr. Stewart treads rather dangerous ground when he says that the

land tv x is a partial solution of the unearned increment, which might moie correctly be termed the “ social values,” for these apply to city and urban lands generally—-and property in general in the opinion of some thinkers.

The fact is that the land tax was a ready and simple expedient “in the beginning,” but none has ever been able to justify it, though it was loss unjust when the land was held by the few and there were not many businesses. The land a farmer cultivates is equivalent to the factory and machinery a manufacturer uses, and it is as unjust in principle and uneconomic in practice to tax the one as it would be to tax the other.—Matamata Record.