THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1880.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3726, 3 December 1880, Page 2

THE Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR O'CLOCK P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1880.

The details connected with the completion of the Auckland Property Tax valuations are likely to be fully completed about the middle of the month, and the information available for the board of reviewers whose names appeared in our Wellington telegrams of yesterday. It is somewhat singular that the gentlemen appointed —Messrs Moat, Tonks and Proude—are all on the side of party politics with the present Ministry, and it is therefore doubtful if they will be generally acceptable to the property holders in the provincial district. The other reviewers gazetted are all supposed to have like political feeling. "We do not for one moment suppose but the officers duly appointed are in every way competent, but there are so many conflicting interests mixed up in the Property Tax business, that, care should have been taken to make the matter alike acceptable to all. What special knowledge can Mr Moat possess of the value of land in Waikato, or vice versa with Mr Proude for Rodney county ? Mr Tonks has a capital knowledge of the value of land in and about the city of Auckland, but will that help him in the Piako and other counties ? v The Property Tax from the firstf was but a poor shift for increasing the revenue of the country, and its subsequent stages makes one think whether after all the Government are sincere in its enforcement. The appointment of the reviewers seem to be the final stage before notifying the levying of the Tax, and we believe that before it is paid the taxpayers will have something to say about its enforcement. The revenue is increasing ; the amounts for land sale are so far largely in excess of calculations; the revenue estimates for other departments of Government have exceeded calculations, and in the face of all these things very little public works are going on. The present burdens of the .people are in all conscience weighty enough, and unless the dire necessities of the colony require it, which we very much doubt, the collection of the Tax should be postponed. Many persons are credited with having been able to evade its provisions so far by sending their money outside of the colony for investment,, and now when the collecting time comes round, if the impost has to be paid, in most cases it will have to be squeezed out of those who are least able to pay. The Land Tax was a much fairer and juster Tax than the Property Tax, and we trust that ere long the provisions of the Land Tax will be the law of the land.