458 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



legal rather than economic? To what extent will population go on to the soil 

 and new homesteads be built and inhabited ? The history of colonial land laws and 

 experiments in settlement has many a strange tale to tell — loopholes discovered in 

 laws, and of legislative designs evaded. On the other hand, Governments and 

 administrators have learned at least something by experience, and public opinion 

 is sincerely in favour of genuine subdivision. Landowners may resent special 

 taxation, but the public resents the locking-up of land, at any rate where it is 

 fairly fertile and well watered. The position is that two severe systems of land 

 taxation now prevail, mainly at the expense of the larger freeholders in Australia 

 and New Zealand. The recent additions to the New Zealand tax should make 

 the two not very dissimilar in severity. Both countries make a special target of 

 absentees. In New Zealand I should fancy that the assessments are not far 

 below the selling value. I should expect the same to be true of the assessments 

 for the Federal land-tax. In both countries local rates are sometimes levied on 

 unimproved land values, sometimes not. In neither has the problem of dis- 

 tinguishing between gross value and unimproved value presented much difficulty. 

 The same may be said of the complications brought in by leases and mortgagto. 

 The taxing of unimproved values rather than gross real estate is on the whole 

 thought just. To what extent will the larger Australian and New Zealand pro- 

 prietors yield? To what extent will they go on paying the greater pnrt of 

 2,400,000?. in yearly land taxes as well as a large share of some 4,600,000Z. of local 

 rates ? The history of the State land taxes shows that those who resisted them 

 when they were imposed were unduly alarmed at them. They have failed to 

 ' burst up.' Even in New Zealand the success of the land tax in that way has 

 been limited. But the taxation, as now levied, is heavier than ever before; and 

 Governments have had experience in drafting acts and assessing land. In good 

 times the landowners may be able to pay up and go on holding, but bad seasons 

 and low prices may make another thing of taxation. 



The following Papers were then read : — 



1. Taxation of Land Values. By C. F. Bickerdike. 



This paper dealt with (1) the national increment value-tax, the question of 

 equity and social consequences, (2) proposals to alter the method of local taxation 

 in such manner as to allow towns having high land values to tax them for the 

 benefit of the locality. 



The increment tax can be and has been powerfully criticised on grounds of 

 equity, and the defence has scarcely been adequate. It can be argued with 

 considerable show of reason that this tax is the only one of which it can be said 

 that the whole of the incidence, not only of the immediate but of the future yield, 

 is on a limited number of existing people who are not necessarily wealthier than 

 the rest of the population. To confine the tax to 'windfalls ' in the strict sense 

 would reduce the yield to very little. However, an analysis of the social conse- 

 quences of investment in properties yielding incomes often remote and hazardous, 

 in connection with the theory of interest, suggests some grounds on which a logical 

 distinction can be drawn between a direct tax on present value of land and a tax 

 on future increments of value. 



But the principal ground on which can be rested the case for taxation of 

 land values is found in connection with local taxation. Contrary to the general 

 trend of economic opinion, it is argued that it is theoretically desirable that land 

 values should be mainly applied to add to the attractiveness of the localities in 

 which they arise. This cannot be attained in view of vested interests, but the 

 equity of some step in the direction of land value taxation is rightly regarded in 

 a different light when the primary purpose is to remove a hindrance to the most 

 advantageous geographical distribution of population and productive power. 



2. How do Wages vary? By Professor E. Waxweiler. 



The question of the laws that govern wages movements has been met by 

 several economic theories: 'supply and demand,' 'wages fund,' ' productivity of 



