THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1892. GRADUATED TAXATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2308, 21 January 1892, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1892. GRADUATED TAXATION.

In writing the other day of the wellestablished recognition of the principle of Graduated Taxation, we altogether omitted to take note —whether from laziness or from some fatuous sense of pity we can hardly tell; —but we took no note of the fact that for the last ten years the system has been in actual operation here amongst ourselves, and that it was introduced into the colony —heaven save the mark—by the very party who are now moving heaven and earth against it as an unheard of outrage. It was Sir John Hall, who during his administration of 1879-82, made the Deceased Persons Estates Duties Act part of the fundamental basis of taxation in the colony, and in 1885 the matter came up for reconsideration, and permanence was given to it by the Amendment Act passed in that year. In the short and compact schedule to these Acts the whole principle of Graduated Taxation starts into life full-blown.

Nor is the principle applied on at all a trifling scale. We will give it in detail: “ There shall be paid,” says the Act, (we are quoting from the 7th Section of the Act of 1881) , “ There shall be paid to the Commissioner by every administrator, duty according to the rate mentioned in the Schedule; ” and on turning to the Schedule we find the duty systematically arranged as follow :—Upon the final balance of any estate not exceeding £IOO, no duty ; up to £IOOO, £2 per cent. ; up to £SOOO, £2 per cent, on the first £IOOO, and three per cent, on the remainder. But this is only the beginning. From £SOOO up to £20,000, the duty is four per cent, on the first additional £SOOO : five per cent, on the next; and six per cent, on the last. Even this is not all. What we have done only goes up to £20,000, and we have many better properties than that in New Zealand, Between £20,000 and £50,000 the rates rise to seren, eitjht, and nine per cent for every additional £IO,OOO, “ or any part thereof,” and if there be an excess over £50,000, it is to be mulcted pur friends are now fond of putting it to us —atnolesH than ten per cent. This

is what in the year 1881 Sir John Hall thought it just and righteous that — not himself, we must do him justice, but—his heirs .find successors should pay into the public Exchequer fi§ their fair share of the national taxation. Even this is not telling the whole truth. In 1885, as we have said, the whole matter came to be reconsidered. Eerhaps our readers may fancy that the

opportunity was taken to make the scale a bit easier; not a bit qf |t. TI| R general provisions of tfle 4- ct were thoroughly overhauled, with the effect, if possible, of making them more drastic than before, and the scale itself was adhered to in a simplified form, and carried lower down. Up to the

first £IOOO the duty ty;is made instead of 2 oer cent. F r P n ) £IOOO to £SOOO it is put at & P«’ cent., and on anything between .£booo and £20,000 it jumps at once, without intermediate steps, to seven per cent., and on anything over £20,000 to ten per eml. We have never heard that any objection was raised, either on the ground of principle or convenience, to the graduated duty. Then what, in the name of wonder, is the meaning of the hubbub that is almost deafening us. There is a tax rising up to 2s in the £ upon the whole of a man’s property, willingly agreed to by the owners of the very property on which it falls the heaviest, and the self-same people are now speaking of it as a thing unheared Qf that Mr Ballance should impose a tax on the same property, while they are still living, at the infinitesimal rate —at the very outside—of one penny and sixeighths of a penny in the £. There is not ev?tl iu thejr own Acts, as there is in Mr BallaPCC s, any fiflowance for improvements.

We protest we only know of one ground of distinction between Mr Ballance’s tax and Sir John Hall’s—and that is a difference, as Mr Chamberlain so strongly pointed out in our extract in last week, not of principle, but in detail, and we confess we cannot conceive it to be a difference lying at the bottom of the outcry. Sir John Hall’s tax fell upon his successors : Mr Ballance’s falls upon him. There iqu4 he something more in it than this., jt cannot roajly bo that the twenty or thirty people whom the new tax really affects arc only crying out —not because their property is unduly rated, for that in the face of their jvu acts is out of t it • question, but because thexax actually falls while they are Mill holders uf it. ’ Why, if there were

anything of this sort about it their case could only be described in Pope’s lines “ I give and I devise,” old Euclid said, And sighed, “ My lands and tenements to Fred.” “ Your money, sir !” illy money, sir What, all / Why, if I must,” —-then wept—“ I give it Paul.” “ The manor, sir!” “ The manor ? Hold !” he cried; “ Not that: I cannot part with that!” and died. To us it appears more reasonable to tax the living than the dead man’s property. While a man lives he is able to accumulate and provide for those dependent on him, but the moment he dies his dependents lose his assistance. It is surely easier for a man who is still accumulating wealtli to pay a tax than it is for his widow and orphans. Sir John Hall taxes the poor unfortunate widow and her orphans. To soothe their grief the tax-gatherer comes in and takes a good percentage of that which has been left to them to place them beyond the reach of want. Mr Ballance’s taxation is exacted from the living man, and we ask our readers to say which is the most, reasonable. For our part we much prefer to tax the living than break in upon the grief of the poor widow and her orphans and tax their property simply because their bread-winner happened to die. We have heard a great deal about Job’s comforters, and we think Sir John Hall ought to be added to ; their number.