Taxation Bill.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 645, 11 August 1891, Page 3

Taxation Bill.

MR BEEVES’ SPEECH. The N.Z. Times gives the following sketchy account of the Hon. Mr Beeves’ speech in the debate on the Taxation Bill :—The Minister of Justice takes up the running on the tide of the Government. After he had found bis feet he finds another thing ; it is that the enemies of the bill have all contradicted each other in the most wonderful manner. Half of them eay we will get no money ; the other half declares that everybody will pay more than he pays now. Ohe of them said it favoured the city man, another said the suburban man was the pet, another thought it was the small settler, another insisted it was the great landholder who escaped (the others said he would be ruined) and another said it was the Banks. “ That was the member for Mount Ida—the only man who knows anything about the bill—who has studied it, Sir, and 1 tracked ’ the Colonial Secretary through it. He has discovered, Sir, that this Bill is a great conspiracy for letting off the great Banks and Loan Companies from taxation. It is not the city man who is our pet, nor the suburban, nor the small farmer, nor the squatter, but the great money lenders.’ This brings the sarcastic Minister, who is going along at a great pace—not a word out of place, not a hesitation, not a sign of confusion of any kind, not a phrase that is not calm and broad ; it brings him 'o another contradiction. One set of the enemy says that the flow of capital to the land is stopped. Mount Ida proves that the fiow is accelerated. Then one man denounces the income tax as inquisitorial, while another says that everybody will avoid it. The objections to the income tax have his attention. It has been denounced by Adam Smith I * Yes, that was Pitt’s tax. Two shillings in the pound sir, and every man who made more than £6O a

year bad to pay. I should thick it was denounced, especially as it was spent in the most reckless and unprofitable war expenditure on record.’ He comes to Mr Stead’s figures. That gentleman, be points out, has based hie calculations on an idea that every estate contains nothing but bare land. He has forgotton the improvements and the stock. He has put down the tax of a £2OOO property at £8 6s. But that is bare land. Take off half for stock and improvements, and the real tax comes to £2 la 91, a very different thing, sir.’ The same fallacy belongs to Mount Ida's figures, he points cut. He takes Mount Ida's table, he dances on that table, he ridicules it in every possible way, and then he dissects it, taking the highest and the lowest instances. His only regret is that Monnt Ida is absent. His first instance is a £6OOO property. Compared with the property tax that property pays 6000, one eighth more under the measure. But there are £3OOO of improvements, and £l5OO of stock. These being exempt, the property gets 36 000 eighths of exemption against 6000 eighths of increase. The highest instance, L 210.000. Bare land value 1 The scoffing vehement Minister scouts the idea. If it were ail bare land value, the property in that case is insolvent, and no Treasurer can legislate for insolvent people. The property tax has already confiscated the whole of bis income. But the property is not all bare land. The improvements and stock added to the bare value bring the total value of that estate to at least L 350.000. It is on that sum that the 5 per cent revenue has to be calculated, not on the £210,000. That makes a considerable difference, the Minister points out. Mr G. F. Richardson and hie figures come in view. Opportune ? When did the hon. gentleman ever think the change from the property tax opportune? The admirers of the property tax never did and never will. As to these figures—well, it is always dangerous to prophesy. He remembers the member for the Hutt -prophesying an enormous surplus which did not come off. Mr Richardson has based his conclusions on the shortage of £42,000 in the first three months. He seems to think that we shall have four agricultural droughts in the South this year—one each quarter—and four censuses for the whole of New Zealand. He has entirely forgotten last year's primage, £lB,OOO. He does not seem to know that the fourth month’s takings have reduced the loss from £42,000 to £13,000. Allowing for the primage, the revenue is £20.000 better than the first four months of last. ‘Read the figures,’ says Mr Richardson. The Minister reads them, and Mr Richardson is silent from henceforth.