20 



BOOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



by borrowing, say, at 3§ per cent, (allowing that the 

 revolutionary scheme has not the immediate effect of destroy- 

 ing our credit), what would be the sum to provide for ? 



The last estimate of private property is stated to be 

 ■£21,386,848, and it will be near enough the mark to state 

 that 40 per cent, of this value refers to land minus improve- 

 ments. This represents a capital sum of £8,554,739. Even 

 if we raised this sum at 8J per cent, par, it would increase 

 our existing charge for interest on debt by £299,415. 



Single Tax fixed in character determined by the needs for 

 public expenditure without regard to the capabilities of the land 

 or to its power to sustain the burden so imposed. 



But if we are to meet the demands of public expenditure 

 we must concentrate all the other modes of raising revenue 

 from taxes and land sales in one single tax or burden upon 

 the land. At present the revenue raised in this way in 

 Tasmania amounts to £455,027 per year. If to this we add 

 the fresh charge for land transfer to the State, the tax upon 

 land would be necessarily raised to £754,443. The present 

 value of the annual rateable value, minus improvements, is 

 estimated to be £440,800. It would therefore follow that 

 the direct burden upon land would be raised £313,643^er year, 

 or 71 per cent, above the burden now imposed upon it by 

 way of rent ; or if we take the land and improvements, it 

 would mean an increase of 28-45 per cent on land and its 

 improvements above the burden at present imposed due to 

 rental. It is true there would be some set-off to this in the 

 abolition of other forms of taxation, at present mainly 

 derived from the luxurious consumption of spirits and 

 tobacco, etc., averaging £2 16s. 2d. per head per year, or 

 £6 5s. 8d. per breadwinner, £11 4s. 8d. per family of four 

 persons, or £14 13s. lOd. per household. 



But it must be borne in mind that at present the taxes 

 actually paid by any one individual, by an inevitable law, is 

 adjusted to the means of the individual. Tor example, the 

 large part of the necessaries of a poor man is not taxed — 

 bread, meat, vegetables, and such like— and even on the 

 taxable articles the amount of tax is proportionate to the 

 amount the individual is enabled to expend upon taxable 

 articles, principally drink and tobacco. A non-drinker and 

 non-tobacco smoker, therefore, at his own pleasure, escapes 

 the greater part of the State tax. In this way any person, 

 by the present mode of taxes, need in case of distress, pay 

 only a very small portion of his income in taxes. 



But in the case of a single tax upon land (ground rent) the 

 poor man in a four-roomed weatherboard hut might have to 

 pay the same amount of tax as his rich neighbour in a fine 



