THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 481, 18 June 1890, Page 4

THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

It appears that there are ominous rumours afloat in Wellington that next session the question of the taxation of absentee property owners who are now drawing princely revenues from New Zealand will be taken into consideration. This is good news, and if the matter is firmly approached and dealt with, it means the beginning of the end of the industrial depression. Not very long ago, the Premier was asked in the House whether he could not suggest a way to make these absentees pay something in lieu of the amounts which they escape in consequence of our fiscal system making Customs duties the chief source of national revenue. Some scheme of taxation ought to be devised which will cause them to contribute to the national revenue a sum in accordance with the wealth they are drawing from the country. Strange to say, at that time the Premier stated that although he had given this subject much anxious thought and considera tion, he could not devise any scheme to meet exceptional cases of such a character, and besides, he had yet to be instructed as to what the term “absentee property owner ” really implied.

When the Premier made this remark three very important official returns had been compiled, and printed and published by order of the House. One return showed how the property tax was paid and who paid it, another gave the names of the owners of all big estates of over 5.000 acres, the unimproved value of the land owned by them, and the value of the improvements made by each owner or occupier. The third was a return showing who were the 1,140 permanent wealthy absentees, and the value of the wealth they held in this colony. Now, if our Treasurer - Premier had cherished any sincere desire to work out some scheme to induce those named in the two last-mentioned returns to contribute to the revenue their fair share of taxation, the information thus placed at his disposal would surely furnish ample data upon which to found his calculations, besides giving him absolute facts, so that in propounding any scheme of taxation, he could easily avoid injustice. The last return showed that these 1,140 of the richest New Zealanders had been absent from the colony for three years or more, and so far as the compilers of the statistics could ascertain, they had no intention of ever coming back again. They were what might be termed permanent absentees. The report also announced that these 1,140 persons owned one-tenth of the capitalised wealth of this colony. As regards these absentees never coining back again, we think that a judicious measure introduced into the House to make them pay their fair quota to the national revenue, might possibly have the efiect of bringing a good number back again, and if a scheme wei’e devised to take from them anything like the same proportion as is squeezed, through the medium of Customs duties, out of the masses who work for wages, it is highly probable that they might see the necessity of remaining in our midst, and spending their incomes in the country.

The owners of the estates of over 5,000 acres number about 1,600. Some of these holdings are only 5,000 acres in extent or a little over, but lumping the whole acreage together, and dividing the total by the 1,600 holders, we discover that the average of each estate is about 21,000 acres. This, it will be observed, places an altogether difierent complexion upon the whole affair. These are freeholds, and it is extremely interesting bo compare the unimproved value in the one column with the value of the improvements made by the owners in the other. A very large number of them, containing hundreds of thousands of acres, are still in a state of nature. Yery many more appear with something under a hundred pounds as expended on improvements. Very few indeed have had anything like the expenditure and improvements made upon them that their rich and productive character demanded. These estates are, to use the words of Mr Ormond at Napier, when speaking of the Maori lands, “waste and unimproved,” and, together with the lands held in lease from the Crown, which are in precisely the same state, are kept from being utilised to their full value because the owners are perfectly happy and contented with the incomes derived from the backs of their sheep, which take only a few men to look after and give no trouble. Bub after fifty years of colonisation, surely it is time the sheep gave way to men, in a colony with such a circumscribed area as ours. So circumscribed is it that the 18,000,000 acres monopolised by these freeholders and leaseholders absorb the pick of the finest agricultural land. We sincerely hope that the rumour circulated at the seat of Government is this time to be relied on, and that the House and Government will see their way even this session to impose an efficient tax on these absentees. Such a measure would not only be a jusc impost, bringing a welcome sum into the Colonial Treasury, but it would mark the beginning of the end of land monopoly in New Zealand.