122 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



bear as a nurseryman, when it is known that he has the power to sell 

 his land for building purposes at perhaps twenty times the nursery 

 value? These are the kind of issues which have to be considered in 

 connection with any system of taxation. As a matter of fact, taxa- 

 tion of land values prevails almost universally in Canada to-day. 

 Land is taxed, or is intended to be taxed, on its prospective value for 

 building, whatever its revenue-producing value may be, while, as 

 already stated, land in Britain is generally taxed for local purposes, 

 according to the revenue-producing capacity at the time each assess- 

 ment is made and according to the use to which the land is put at 

 that time. 



It has been claimed, and justly so, that the system of taxing site 

 values only, as applied in some western cities, cannot be regarded as 

 a fair test of the single tax proposals of Henry George. The western 

 system was not designed to bring land into common ownership by 

 confiscating rental values, but in practice it went much further than 

 even Henry George ever contemplated, because it resulted in confis- 

 cating more than the rental values in a great many cases. A great deal of 

 the land is not only taxed on a building value it never can possess, 

 but the tax amounts to more than can be derived from the land in the 

 form of rent for any use to which it can be put. Some single 

 taxers claim that the failure was due to the tax not going far enough. 

 This might be the case in regard to some valuable building lots near 

 to the centres of the city, but, in the case of remote sub-divisions, the 

 tax is actually greater than the rental value and the owners have to 

 pay more in taxes for the privilege of holding the land than they are 

 able to earn from it, after making allowance for any prospective 

 increase of value. So long as private ownership in land is permitted 

 by law this is economically unsound and is a social injustice. 



The large amounts of arrears of taxes in western cities have 

 brought home to the taxpayers the fact that a sound system of taxa- 

 tion must have regard to the ability of the taxpayer to pay the tax 

 out of the earning power of his property. In referring to the problem 

 of taxation of site values in the city of Winnipeg the Manitoba Free 

 Press says: — 



"That problem is involved in the conflict between the principle 

 of taxation of unearned increment of value of land, reduced to an 

 annual basis, and that of ability to pay as gauged by the income or 

 earnings of the individual taxpayer. . . . Much injustice is done by 

 taxing the landowner upon the basis of year to year growth of value 

 from natural causes, there being no necessary connection between 

 that growth and earning power or ability to meet the rising tax bills; 

 change of ownership, however, implies that ability." 



