Assessment of Leased Land.

Special provision is supplied to meet the case of lands held on a lease for more than one year. The owner's interest is taken at fourteen times the annual rent received by him, and this will give a protection to those who own land that was let for a long term before the great rise in property took place. For instance—The owner of a Wellington town acre let it in 1869 for 21 years at £20, its then full yearly value, but the land is now worth £2000. This would be assessed to the owner at fourteen times £20, equal to £280, on which sum he would be taxed at 1d. in the pound=£1 3s. 4d. The leaseholder would be assessed at the value of his lease; that is, what it would sell for. A tenant of a Corporation property, known as the reclaimed land, Wellington, pays a rental of 10s. a foot frontage on 60 feet, but this land is worth, to sell, £60 a foot. This would give a total value of £3600, and as the tenant only pays £30 a year, the landlord's interest—if the Corporation were not exempt—would be £420, while that of th e tenant would be £3180, and his tax £13 5s. He would have to pay that on account of the land, and the improvements on it would be added to his assessment. If they were worth £3000 his total tax in respect of the property would be £13 5s. and £12 10s—£23 15s. In the case of an Invercargill town section let on a forty years lease at £50 a year the landlord's interest would be £700, and if the land and buildings were together likely to bring £5000 at auction, the tenant's interest might page 9 be returned at £4000, on which he would pay £16 13s. 4d, and the landlord's tax would be £2 18s 4d. If a property should be let to a tenant who again sub-let, the interest of tenant and sub-tenant or sub-tenants would have to be assessed at the value of each to sell, that of the landlord being taken at fourteen times his rental.