LAND AND INCOME TAX.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1231, 24 November 1874, Page 2

LAND AND INCOME TAX.

The North Otago Times, in advocating an income and property tax, admits that such a proposition would probably cost the life of the Ministry that had the temerity to bring it forward, though its imposition is only a question of time. To provide against tho inequalities of such tax, it proposes the exemption of incomes up to £2OO a year from taxation altogether; and with respect to incomes over that amount, would levy the tax only upon tho sum in excess of £2OO a-year, that proportion of every man's income (no mutur what the gross amount of his income might be) gting- free of impost,

and a scale of allowances on some such plan as the following;:—Divide the amount of taxable income up to £6OO per annum that is up to £4OO beyond the first £2OO, which should be free of taxation, into eight parts, and allow one part (in case of an income of £OOO a»year —£50 for a wife and for each child, free of taxation ! that is, added to the untaxable part of the income £200) £OO for a wife and £SO for each child to be maintained out of the income until the entire £6OO was untaxable. The effect would be this—to give two examples:—A man with a wife and two children and an income of £4OO would pay the percentage representing the tax on £2OO, less threeeights of that amount —in other words, would pay on £125 ; a man having a wife and four children, and an income of £SOO a-ycr.r, would pay on £3OO, less five-eights of that sum—that is, would pay the tax on £ll2 10s, and so on. Deductions only to be made on sums up to £OOO, the excess of income over that amount in all cases paying the full rate per cent* A land tax should be proceeded with in a similar spirit by allowing every man an un« taxable homestead acreage, outside the limits of towns of fifty acre*, taking only the acreage held in excess of that amount. Then too, laud held by absentees, by non-residents i;i the colony, unimproved and of equal class to adjoining improved lands, should be taxed at the full valuation of the lands so adjoining. The effect of this alone would work a vast change for the better, and it would necessarily cause the lands to be parted with to resident owners or brought into cultivation.