The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1915. LAND TAXES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 26 November 1915, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1915. LAND TAXES.

, • (With which is incorporated The Taihape Post and Waimarino News.)

The recently enacted Finance Act is going to prove a veritable Chinese puzzle to many of our farmers and the person or persons responsible for its framing will, whether they deserve It or not, have anathemas galore showered upon them. The average farmer is just about as able to give what the Commissioner of Taxes want as he is to translate one of the classics. The forms issued for taxation purposes contain demands for information that are going to prove perplexing to the farmejr and become an annoyance to the Com-

missioner. When we say they are going to he troublesome to the farmer we mean that they -would be equally troublesome to many other people, for farmer or no fanner, we venture to say that with only the form to guide him the farmer really does not know what information he has to furnish. He will he held up somewhat when he comes to Schedule C, by which it seems clear that he may deduct cost of seed in filling m the return, hut there clarity vanishes, and be will not know whether: he may deduct the cost of manure or other outlays not any more unusual than the cost of seed. For instance, the cost of keeping the law with respect to the Noxious Weeds Act, clearing fi-tree and such like. Farmers who understand thoroughly the systems of moddrn book-keeping may he able to negotiate the difficulties and pitfalls of the return demanded, but

for such purposes as taxation, where penalties -are imposed by law for noncompliance with the regulations of the Tax Department, as the Commissioner of Taxes understands them, something more thap the obscure and involved return form should have been drafted. A practical farmer in framing such a document would have left nothing in doubt, no pitfalls, or possible causes for unpleasantnesses and. perhaps, prosecutions. To compel the farmer to go to an. accountant, or his solicitor, involving waste of time and an expenditure of money, is an injustice the drafter of the return probably never anticipated, but there seems no reason why the document should not have been made sufficiently lucid as to have left nothing in doubt. In a large and nnrelv farmin'!' district like this, the inidnisrht oil will be burned in pow’ins:

ever those ldts=ed returns in dozens, if not hundred? of farm houses. Returns that not e v en a Philadelphia lawyer could understand.