EVASION OF THE PROPERTY TAX IN AMERICA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 368, 15 May 1889, Page 5

EVASION OF THE PROPERTY TAX IN AMERICA.

Onk of the strong points made by Sir H % A. Atkinson in his speech at Auckland on the property tax was the fact that it is the form of taxation adopted by a majority of States in the American Union. It appears, however, from disclosures recently made in the United States that the evasions there by wealthy people are as notorious as they have become in this colony, where absentees who own about a tenth of the real and personal estate in the colony escape payment ot the Customs revenue which is the chief contribubor to the expenses of governing the country and paying interest on the national debt. Some of ihe results recorded in connection with the working of tho property tax in America are very curious. One of the most experienced assessors of the State of New York, in giring his evidence before a committee of Congress, said • "No man and no corporation, banks only excepted, need pay a tax upon personal property. Widows and orphans must pay. Upon them, in the extremity of their distress, the law lays its heavy hand. It bereaves the bereaved." Ten years ago in 1879 the State of /California adopted a new constitution for the purpose of more efficiently levying taxes on personal property. An American writer, commenting this year upon the results obtained under this new constitution, says : " It was supposed alike by the friends and enemies of the new constitution, that under its operation personal property of every description would be thoroughly reached, and that at any rate whatever was by any chance overlooked would be more than made up by double taxation in that wh eh was found (holders of stock were avowedly and intentionally subjected to double taxation, first upon the corporate property and again upon the capital stock). The actual result has been to falsify all the predictions of both the friends and the enemies of the constitution, for fche reason that the capacity of the patriotic taxpayer to commit perjury, and the susceptibility of the assessors to bribery, had been altogether under-estimated. Some of the results are positively ludicrou*. If the assessment returns are to believed, there is not a pound of butter on hand in nine-tenths of California ; in four-fifths of the State the sheep produce no wool ; fifty counties havo innumerable bee - hives, but only four have any honey j perronal property is vanishing from San Francisco ; loana~ -of money are becoming unknown in the rest of the State ; bonds of cities and municipalities of all kinds are not held within the State, to an amount equal to one-sixth of the county bonds outstanding alone ; and finally money has been smitten by a pestilence, two-thirds of all that there was before the adoption of the constitution having* already taken to itself wings and the remainder being evidently on the way." Some remarkable statistics leading in tho same direction have recently been published in connection with the State of Ohio. In 1882 there were 118,286 watches entered on the property schedules of the citizens of Ohio ; in 1887, though their wealth and the population had enormously increased in the meantime, they only had 114,631 watches between them. The same thing with carriages — in 1882 they had 254,918, in 1887 only 224,440; money in hand— in 1882 46,160,000 dollar*, in 1887 only 35,132,000 dollars. We should like to see a similar investigation instituted with regard to the working of the property tnx in New Zealand. Auoleland Star, May 13.