Il6 URUGUAY - AGRICULTURAL ECOXOMY IX GENERAL 



posed by the law which we have examined. The same Habiht}^ attaches 

 to landowners who, while they are domiciled in the territory' of the repub- 

 lic, have been outside it for more than a year when the tax becomes 

 pa3'able. Exemption from this additional liability is given to foreign com- 

 mercial or industrial companies who are established in the country by a 

 State grant, to the properties on which they conduct the industry or trade 

 which is the object of the grant, and to certain properties in the coast 

 watering-places of the country. 



The landowner affected by article I of this law, who does not make the 

 stipulated payment, will be liable to a fine of 20 per cent, of the amount 

 of the tax on his real estate, including the additional tax. 



Moreover by a clause which is proof of the desire to strike at the owner 

 rather than the lessee, the law establishes that the additional tax is payable 

 by the landlord, even if the lease stipulate that the land tax is to fall on 

 the lessee. 



As a consequence of the provisions we have indicated, the decree 

 regulating the law establishes that deposit and discount banks, credit banks 

 and institutions, and societies and individuals who administer real estate 

 belonging to the persons included by article i of the law, must in the course 

 of February' of each year notify such fact to the directors of direct taxation 

 in the capital and the administration of revenues in the departments, giv- 

 ing all required information as to the name, qualit}' and domicile of the pro- 

 prietors they represent. The administration will thus be able to prepare 

 a register of absentee proprietors. 



The IVIinister of Finances has made a point of stating exactly, on ii 

 March IQ16, the principle of the law, which is " to tax the absentee landlord, 

 owing to the economic evil caused to a country by a j^roprietor letting his 

 real estate to others who develop it with their own capital ". 



The government wished especially to exempt from this provision the 

 large Liebig establishments, on the ground that the capital emploj'ed on 

 this enterprise, which was at first foreign, has been so invested in Uruguay 

 that there has been an incorporation of positive wealth, of a factor of pro- 

 duction, and of an element which so raises the value of the products of 

 breeding that it has given birth to a centre of industrial life, and caused a 

 numerous labouring population to be established on the country's soil. 



