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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 29

What Taxes are Collected?

What Taxes are Collected?

There are local rates in cities, towns, drainage, and road districts; but these are spent on local improvements, that add value to the property, or tend to prevent disease in the district rated. There was a poll-tax on children, and a tax at so much a house, big or small, for public education purposes; but these have been done away with. There is a poll-tax on dogs, but that is only to prevent the nuisance of too many useless ones, and to provide for registration, so that the owner may be known in case of damage to or by the useful animal.

It is of taxes for colonial revenue purposes that I ask the question: taxes out of which is defrayed the cost of "peace, order, and good government," the protection of life, property, and income from danger or outrage, and the enjoyment of them in security and comfort; the cost of public works and immigration adding value to property and income; and the cost of interest and sinking fund on the heavy debt which the Colony has incurred for all the above purposes, but chiefly the last mentioned.

The public revenue—the money received yearly by Government, to be spent according to law for the public welfare—is divided into two classes:—1. Territorial, or Land Revenue; 2. Ordinary, or Consolidated Revenue.