THE H.B. TRIBUNE FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1930 VICIOUS TAXATION

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 149, 13 June 1930, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 1930 VICIOUS TAXATION

The report which has been made by the Commission set up under the Land and Income Tax Amendment Act of last session to enquire into cases of “hardship" resulting from the imposition by that Act of a super-tax on land makes instructive reading. It shows that of the 628 appeals lodged with the Commission substantial relief has been granted in no less than 508 cases. Only in 23 cases was the evidence tendered deemed insufficient to warrant any remission of the supertax, while in the remaining cases the appeals were abandoned without adducing evidence. The total amount remitted came to £118,287, the great bulk of which, as the commissioners state, was attributable to cases in which “serious hardship arose from heavy financial liabilities combined with other forms of hardship calling for relief." From this it may be gathered that there are a very considerable number of the holders of big areas in this country who are very little to be envied. It may also be inferred from the report that in many cases, probably in the great majority, the land was entirely unsuitable for subdivision —in some having been specifically rejected by the Government when offered for that purpose. What has to be remembered is that but for the long fight that the Reform Opposition put up when the Bill was being discussed in Parliament a ntost manifest injustice would have been done to a large number of men who are having a hard struggle to make ends meet on land which would be absolutely valueless in the hands of small settlers, either to themselves or to the community. It is not, of course, to bo expected that any very widespread sympathy would have been extended to them had the unjust taxation actually driven

them off their land, as it might well have done. At the same time, however, there should surely be enough intelligence among us, if only it were exercised, to understand that this would have been a calamity for the country as well as for the individuals directly affected. It would have meant that large areas of land which are yielding part of the produce that goes to make up tht national income would, like a good deal before it, have been thrown out of productiveness. As a result, not only the landholders themselves, but also all the people of the country, dependent as they are upon our exportable primary products, would have been so much the poorer. There would have been so much the less money received from abroad for spending, and there would, without doubt, have been so much the more to be said of unemployment. These were aspects of the case which neither the Government nor its Labour friends seemed competent to appreciate. All they could do was to misrepresent the Reform “stonewallers’’ as fighting for the wealthy squatter and the wool - king — a very manifest absurdity where the only claim to relief was to be based on “serious hardship.” In any case, if those who listen to this old parrot-cry would only give themselves time to think, what is the value to any political party, in a country with universal Iranchise, of the handful of votes, scattered up and down the country, that could be thus secured I The day is long past when any politician can hope to win a place by studying the interests of the wealthy alone, be they landholders or of any other kind. What is really wanted is to induce men of means to use their money resources in the promotion of industries and—since even the Government tells us the expansion of our rural industries is our only hope of salvation—more especially in developing the resources and capacity of the soil. But, far from encouraging the embarkation of capital in this direction, the Government, by its ill-conceived scheme of taxation, has been making the poorer classes of land the least desirable form of investment for either a would-be ownei or a would-be lender. From the Commission we hear only of those who were still able to hold on, provided they got relief. But there have been scores, probably hundreds, of others whose properties were so depreciated in security value by the taxation policy of the present Government that their position became utterly hopeless and their backers had to throw in the sponge after this final knock out blow. By all means, let us have a system of taxation which will distribute the load as fairly as is possible, but not one that is going to drive private capital away from assisting in the improvement of our productive capacity. “That way madness lies.”