PUBLIC
། ༴། ༄། ། ། །
RECORD OFFICE
ווןוזן ודו
Reference -
C.O.882/12
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
204
1
of the estimated total yield of Rs.400,000, a result which furnishes a striking commentary on the equity of the arrangement whereby this tax was substituted for the export duty on sugar.
Not only is the total amount of the revenue raised much less than that under the original tax, but the incidence of the burden has very largely been shifted to other shoulders. The sugar tax was a charge upon the sugar cultivators and might be regarded as an alternative to the occupational licences paid by other classes. The house tax is levied upon the whole population, and a large part of it comes from the pockets of the rural labourers, only a very few of whom would have been brought within the ambit of the sugar export duty. Viewed both in its original form as a bargain between the State and a particular class of taxpayer, and its general aspect as part of the whole financial system, the arrangement strikes us as quite inequitable. To charge an agricultural labourer Rs.2 a year on a property valued at Rs.100-to take an average case is to impose a burden out of all proportion to that which results from a charge of Rs.300 on a property of Rs.30,000, and the inequality in this case is aggravated by the fact that the charges are made under an arrangement whereby the richer man has been relieved of an original charge which may well have amounted to Rs.10,000 per annum. Nor is this the whole story. A very considerable part of the sugar duty fell upon planters living in the wealthy townships who were placed outside the range of the substituted tax. It is true that as residents in the town- ships they pay a house rate of an equivalent amount, but that rate was already in existence and although similar in the amount and manner of its imposition was, and is, essentially a local rate to meet the cost of maintaining the amenities of an urban area and not a part of the general taxation of the Colony. A final objec- tion to the tax as it stands is that it operates to depress the standard of housing in the case of labourers living under the con- tract system on sugar estates. The tax in this case falls upon the estate as owner of the properties, and is incurred for every room provided up to a maximum of Rs.3 per house. It is in the interest, therefore, of estates to lodge their labourers in one- roomed houses, and under present conditions the additional tax is a serious deterrent to estate owners who are genuinely anxious to provide proper housing conditions for their workers. We are glad to state, however, that, notwithstanding this penalty placed upon their efforts, some estates at least are now erecting better and more substantial dwellings to replace the straw huts which were damaged by the recent hurricane.
26. On equitable grounds alone, we should feel justified in re- commending that the arrangement should be revised so as to exempt from liability to house tax the smallest properties up to Rs.1.000 in value, and we consider that the exemption should also be extended
205
346
to the same classes of properties in the townships and in the Municipality of Port Louis. Quite apart from the equitable aspect of the case, however, we regard a direct impost of this nature as wholly unsuitable in the case of the poorest class of taxpayer. It is at all times difficult, and more particularly in times like the present when wages have been made to bear a heavy share of the irade depression, for the small wage earner to save an amount equivalent to nearly a week's wages-the sum required for a house of Rs.500-only to hand this over to the tax collector, and the Inevitable result is that which has in fact occurred, the accumulation of a multitude of arrears, and a disproportionate waste of time and money on the part of the Government in the fruitless effort to effect their recovery. In our inspection of the various departments con- cerned in making these efforts, viz., the Revenue, Public Health, Public Works, and Legal Departments, we have been struck by the number of small officials whose time is largely taken up in the work of recovery of petty public dues, such as house tax, night-soil fees and water-rates, with the result in a large proportion of the cases that the dues have eventually to be written off as irrecoverable. We have already quoted the figures for house tax. In the case of water-rate and night-soil fees the arrears outstanding at the beginning of the present financial year were as follows:
Water-rate Night-soil
Rs.
70,529
221,605
The figures for water-rate are those for fountain rate only, for which the charge is Rs.2 per annum for a four-roomed house, with a higher rate for larger houses. By comparing these rates with the amount of the arreurs still outstanding which do not include the large arrears which have been written off. some indication will be obtained of the number of petty cases which waste the time and clog the machinery of the department and district courts, providing work for a multitude of clerks, inspectors, and process servers. We have already dealt with the administrative aspect of the matter in discussing the several departments. It is not possible to estimate accurately the total amount of the saving which could be effected by abolishing these charges, inasmuch as this saving, in any cases, although conditional upon, would not be wholly attributable to their abolition. We do not regard the question of saving, how- ever, as the decisive factor in the matter. A change is demanded in the interest of efficient administration. The efficiency of the whole system of government in the Colony must suffer, and in our opinion does in fact suffer, from the imposition of these numerous petty charges upon humble individuals, with, as the figures of arrears testify, only a speculative chance of effecting their pay- ment. The result is to produce a general sense of the unreality of government and a widespread suspicion that the minor officials of government are aiding and abetting the defaulters. We have
!