THE LAND TAX.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2261, 16 June 1880, Page 3

THE LAND TAX.

The country, we ore satisfied, will insist on its preference for the restoration and increase of the land tax. We are at a loss to conceive why the Government, which had so just and easy a means of raising additional taxation, should have adopted the strange course of merging it in the property tax. The inquisitorial nature of the property tax, and the absurdly extensive limits within which it operates, have been the chief causes of the hostility it has evoked ; but underlying - this is the conviction that it has been the means of enabling the owners of land once again to escape from that contribution to the revenue which should long since have been exacted from them. There will always be a disposition to resist increased taxation, however necessary, until a revenue has been raised from the land corresponding to its ability to contribute, and consistent with the groat advantages enjoyed by its possessors. It would bo difficult to lay a linger on any public expenditure which has not benelltted them, and it would be easy to point out some which has been specially advantageous to them. The loan expenditure on railways has prodigiously increased the value of land, and at the same time a largo sum has to be taken annually from the consolidated revenue to pay that portion of the interest on the loans not supplied by the earnings of the lines. Thus wc have the land proprietors reaping the advantage and the country paying the piper.