8. In the course of the investigations I discovered a fraud which no doubt has been going on for some years whereby the owner of a property not only made a return to me of the rent he said he received, which, however, proved to be about half of what he actually did collect, but he collected Taxes from his Tenants by producing to them an authority purporting to emanate from the Colonial Treasury demanding Taxes based on a Rental even greater than the amount received thereby making a very large profit out of the Rates for which he was arrested and the Magistrate admitting him to bail in the sum of $1,500 to come up on remand, the defendant did not appear and so the bail was forfeited, and I have reasons to believe that this is but one of many such cases, but the difficulty of obtaining evidence from the Chinese is so great that it is almost impossible to get a conviction.
9. The House numbering of the tenements having now been added to my duties by the Rating Ordinance, I purpose re-numbering the Old Tenements and numbering the New Ones, in the respective Villages as soon as possible as until that is done it is impossible to accurately assess them or describe them in the Rate Book.
10. In conclusion I beg to state that, I believe the recent prosecutions have had a wholesome effect on the Chinese in making them see, that they can no longer, with impunity and without great risk of being very heavily fined, make false returns of their Rents to the Assessment Department.
11. The amount of fines, &c. viz.: $4,375 will more than pay the entire cost of my Department this year, for which a sum of $3,598 was provided for in the Estimates.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
A. SHELTON HOOPER.
Assessor.