Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/165

Rh —land devoted to growing rice crops requiring constant watering, but which must never be inundated. "From time immemorial Egyptian law has recognized an intimate connection between the land tax and water supply. The land which, in any given year, gets no water, is for that year legally exempt from all taxation whatever. As soon as it gets water its liability is established. But it is evident that the mere fact of receiving some water, though it may set up the liability of the cultivator to pay, does not insure his capacity to do so. In order to insure that, he must get his water in proper quantities, and at the proper times. But this is just what, in thousands of instances, he could not get, as long as the irrigation system remained in the state of unutterable neglect and confusion into which it had fallen in the period previous to the British occupation of the country." Arrears of land taxes throughout the whole country to the amount of about $5,000,000 have been remitted altogether by the commission, while lands incapable of cultivation, but heretofore made subject to taxation, have to a great extent been relieved. "A considerable class of lands, called mazroof, sold many years ago by the Government at a quitrent which in the course of time had come to be looked upon as a specially high rate of land tax, has also been assimilated to the surrounding districts.

"Another measure of great importance for the future has been the adoption of more liberal fiscal regulations with regard to land brought for the first time under cultivation. Formerly the first attempt to reclaim a piece of uncultivated land brought down the taxgatherer, who at once subjected it to the full burden of the land tax. Now it remains untaxed until it yields the first remunerative crop, and then for two years it pays only half the normal rate. In the same broad spirit, facilities have been granted to people who are found without proper title in possession of land belonging to the Government, but on which they have spent labor and money in developing. Such occupiers can nowadays be confirmed in possession on very easy terms, in which full account is taken of all improvements. Finally, a scheme has been devised, and has been already applied with considerable success, for securing relief, without having to enter upon a general reassessment, in those no longer very numerous cases where the existing land tax is really excessive. Instead of allowing, as hitherto, arrears to accumulate which have ultimately to be remitted, the defaulting land is seized and put up for sale, but on such terms as to facilitate the re-entry of the owner on a lighter rating wherever the arrears are shown to be due to a prohibitive assessment in the past.

"Thus, not only the huge accumulation of arrears and the many smaller obstacles have been removed which blocked the approaches to the land tax, but the land tax itself has been cleared of its most mischievous excrescences."

The area of land under cultivation in Egypt in 1894 was about five millions of acres; and in the least prosperous part of the country the tax on the same has been reduced, since the creation of the commission, to an extent of at least thirty per cent. The revenue from the taxation of land, which is at present estimated as not exceeding on an average £1 ($5) per acre, constitutes fully one half of the total receipts of the Egyptian treasury.

In 1886, before the reduction in this tax had been made.