Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/851

 NOTES AND MEMORANDA 899' owners of ground-rents and on the owners of increased values imparted to land by building operations or other improvements," and is dated July 9, 1891. The Committee state that they have examined numerous witnesses, but have not, owing to the late period of the session at which the evidence was completed, sucient time to fully consider their report. They have therefore agreed to report the evidence they have taken, to the House, and recommend that a Committee be re-appointed at the next session of Parliament. The volume under review, contains a verbatim report of the evidence of the several witnesses who were examined. As regards the question of the division of rates, Mr. J. F. Moulton, Q.C., who was one of the witnesses, gave it as his opinion that under the present system there are these two elements in taxation; that it is partly in the nature of a personal charge, and partly in respect of property, and that the proportion in which the respective parties bear these charges and the mode of incidence should be varied. He stated that at present the apportionment was very irregular and very uncertain, and referring to that portion of rates which is a charge upon property, in reply to a question as to the definition of "property" upon which the local rates should be charged, said that he looked upon towns (taking them as an example of local communities) to a certain extent as he regarded independent states in a very close federation one to the other, and was of opinion that that which ought to bear the expenditure of the community is the property locally situated within the habitat of the comnunity, and that is for very sound reasons confined to landed property situated there. He gave his reasons why a mortgagee should not be considered as an owner, and expressed the belief that there would be no difficulty in distributing the taxation fairly among the several interests. He was in favour of land being taxed more than houses, and referred to the system of taxation set forth in a pamphlet written by him, the essence of the plan being that the taxes shall actually be borne by the person who receives the yearly return from the property. Mr. Howard Martin, another of the witnesses examined, gave it as his opinion that a division of rates between owners and occupiers would cause great inconvenience and friction in the manage- ment of house property, while a revision of existing contracts would also be necessary, and Mr. Edward Ryde agreed that it would be an undesirable thing to divide the rates between the landlord and the tenant in future. Mr. George Beken submitted a plan showing the working of the proposals to divide rates in future between the occupier and the owner as compared with the present system. He stated that the carrying out of his proposals would cause no change in the ultimate pecuniary result to any of the parties, except the loss due to the complicated transactions which would be involved. Mr. Moulton gave evidence at considerable length in support of proposals for the taxation of ground-rents, maintaining that the.