The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1915. TAXING THE FARMERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 November 1915, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1915. TAXING THE FARMERS.

The effort being made to tax the income of farmers is not likely to prove a great success. Its effect on farmers is but to annoy and perplex them. The forms to be filled in would tax the ingenuity and resource of a Philadelphia lawyer. How the Department can expect the average farmer to fill in the forms accnrately is beyond us. The Prime Minister tlast week issued an explanation, 'but it issnot very helpful. The department presupposes that the average farmer closes his accounts and takes stock at particular ■periods of the year. How many farmers do so? Very few. Of course, they should do so for their own protection and advantage. Without a. balancesheet, however roughly drawn lift it is impossible for a farmer or anyorie else in business to know his position. Farmers are required to enter particulars of the value of their stock twelve or" eighteen months ago, as the case may hie, but they can only be approximate, and tcould very easily pTove misleading. Atiiother item to be set down is the estimated value of the farm produce used for the farmer's own family, but he must not include what is used for servants or laborers. Any figures set down cans lot be accurate, no matter how serupulowsily careful and conscientious a taxpayer tnaiy be. Then the unfortunate farmer to separate the items for working the. farm from those incurred in erecting new buildings, fences, etc., and mating permanent improvements. Thin will tangle him up again. The other points are equally puzzling, and one wonders how it has come *bout that a fajrmer like Mr. Massey and a business man like Sir Joseph Ward should ever havefcailowed soch complex forma to go out. The whole idea is, in our humble judgment, wrong. The aim of the Government was to secure for the State a war profits caused by the high faces of staple products. Could not thfofeii&liave been accomplished by imposing a tax upon the products made and Ifejqxflted.? An export tax would not by ttsielf have been equitable, as the produce** consumed: in the Dominion would have e*sda.ped, but an effective way of taxing could easily enough have been devisefi without peifkcring and harassing thed farmers in the way the Department ia iwj w doing.