THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1892. GRADUATED TAXATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2320, 18 February 1892, Page 2

THE Temuka Leader. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1892. GRADUATED TAXATION.

No doubt if the twenty or thirty millionaires in land, of whom we have been speaking lately could say that they paid their share in other ways in to the Colonial Treasury, it would be unfair to single them out for a special levy by means of a graduated tax. This is a point, however, which has not been overlooked by the advocates of the system at Home ; and it is one on which, though we have not the actual figures before us, it will not be a very difficult matter to come to a tolerably clear conclusion in our own wise. We will take for the purpose the figures made use of by Mr Chamberlain in the speech we referred :o the other day. There is not likely ;o be much error about them. The layments into the revenue, not only in he aggregate, but under all the )rincipal heads, are published pe■iodically, and the only thing which is natter for calculation is the proportion >aid under each head by the higher ,wl lower classes respectively. On his point Mr Chamberlain tells us his msitf. He assumes that " the upper nd middle classes pay the whole of j lie assessed taxes, the whole of the

and tax, the whole of the income tax, the whole of the death duties, the whole of the wine duties, and the whole of* the game licenses, and some other small taxes." He assumes further that '• they pay one-third of the duties on spirits, beer, and tobacco, and threefifths of the duty upon tea and coffee." Assuming all these amounts to be included in the taxation paid by the " upper and middle classes," what is the amount they pay, and what proportion does it bear to their means of payment? Set off against this the amount paid by the poorer classes, and the proportion that bears to their means of payment, and you have the answer to the question whether the rich do in some way or other pay their share into the National Exchequer at Home. A very few words will be sufficient to apply the parallel to our own case.

Mr Chamberlain had stated that " the rich pay too little and the poor pay too much." On the eve of the general election of 1885 he made this the theme of several of his addresses, and in his great speech at Hull he is at pains to justify the statement. lie takes as the basis of his calculation the figures of the public revenue of 1883-4, and the income and the payments of all classes, as estimated by Professor Leone Levi, and the usual deduction, as being non-taxable, of the ' income necessary for existence,' tabulated by ' the most eminent of eminent statisticians,' Mr Giffen. Upon these authorities it appears that the whole amount paid in to the Exchequer in from this the Post Office and Telegraph revenue, and some other services (which are not properly part of the taxation), the sum to be dealt with was £65,400,000, of this sum £38,200,000 appears, on the assumption above quoted, to have been paid by the ' upper and middle classes,' leaving £27,200,000 paid by the workers. The first class paid their taxation out

of an income of 753 millions, or about 5 per cent, on their incomes ; the poor paid theirs out of an available income of 203 millions only, or 18£ per cent, on their poverty. So /ar Mr Chamberlain. Applying all this to ourselves, we have first to remember that the list of taxes made up by Mr Chamberlain, from the assessed taxes to the game licenses, are taxes from which our twenty or thirty friends who take the new system so sorely to heart have been almost, if not altogether, free. Those taxes cannot with us be counted in as equalising their share of taxation with that of the people of the colony generally, for they don't exist. What we have had (speaking roughly), are the Customs, Stamp, the Property Tax, the Succession Duties, and the Beer Tax. Of these the poorest land purchaser pays his 7s 6d in his £SO purchase just as the wealthiest pays his on every £SO worth that he purchases, and the tendency is to the multiplication of small freeholds. The gallant twenty—the noble army of martyrs to the new taxation—can hardly know what it is to make a land purchase. They got their fee simple before the days of stamp duties. The stamps may reach the men of business, they don't touch them. The Property Tax came of course nearer, but that is taken off. The sight of any publichouse bar will tell us that whoever it is pays the Beer Duty, they do not. The Succession Duties, as we saw the other day they look upon with great equanimity. Those duties will not touch them ; they will only come some day to be paid by their successors. There remains only the Customs Duties These are practically duties upon the necessaries and decencies of life-things of AT'Juch no one man wants more than anofc— -of which every man must have what lie wants, and no man cares to have wore, By force, therefore, of their mere numbers the bulk of this taxation falls upon the poorer class. So fully is tins recognised that Sir 11. Atkinson his £SOO exemption from the Property Tax on the plea that those who it'exempted already paid more than their share i» Customs Duties. This was before the grand increase of ij u§7, If that was true then ' have we < fiOt «W fUi am P le justification for our -1 **wt§& &wi 'fax in the necessity rau *-« feUiusta the balance ? of once mo. e d