/. E. Le Rossignol and W. D. Stewart 



make incomes derived from mortgages subject to the income tax. 

 To do this would be to sacrifice some revenue and to discriminate 

 against resident lenders, who could not evade the income tax, but 

 the borrowers would probably gain more than the government 

 would lose. For this reason it would be only fair to make them 

 pay additional taxes on their land. The total revenue from the 

 land tax, including the tax on mortgages, for the year 1907-8 

 was £537,846. For the year 1906-7 the revenue was £447,342, 

 of which the ordinary land tax yielded £321,413 and the gradu- 

 ated land tax, including the tax on absentee owners, yielded 

 £125,929. 



The graduated land tax, which was designed chiefly to compel 

 the large holders to sell or otherwise subdivide their estates, has 

 recently been altered in the direction of increasing the tax on the 

 larger holdings. 1 It begins with a tax of x / 16 of a penny in the 

 pound when the unimproved value in any assessment is not less 

 than £5,000 and is less than £7,000, and increased by sixteenths 

 to 13 /ie 0I a penny when the unimproved value is between £35,000 

 and £40,000. When the unimproved value is £40,000 the rate is 

 suddenly increased to 8s. in every £100 (0.4 of I per cent), and 

 for every additional £1,000 of unimproved value the rate is in- 

 creased by 1 / 5 of a shilling in every £100. The rate reaches its 

 maximum at £200,000, when it is 2 per cent on the total unim- 

 proved value. For and after the year ending March 31, 1910, 

 the progressive taxes on estates over £40,000 are to be increased 

 by 25 per cent in the case of land other than business premises. 



The total ordinary and graduated taxes paid by the owners of 

 very large estates are now very heavy. An estate of which the 

 unimproved value is £200,000, exclusive of business premises, 

 pays a graduated tax of 2.y 2 per cent in addition to the ordinary 

 land tax of id. in the pound (0.41 of 1 per cent), making 2.91 per 

 cent in a-11. But the graduated tax is increased by 50 per cent in 

 the case of absentee owners, so that the absentee owner of an 

 estate of which the unimproved value was £200,000, if such an 

 estate existed, would pay a tax of 4.16 per cent. By the Amended 



*An Act to Amend the Land and Income Assessment Act, 1900. October 

 26, 1907. 



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