THE RATING OF LAND VALUES.
The Rating of Land 'Values: Notes upon the Proposals to Leer Rates in Respect of Site Values. By Arthur Wilson Fox, C.B., Secretary to the Royal Commission on Local Taxation. Second Edition, Revised. (King and Son. 3s. 6d. net.)—In view of the zeal with which political parties are now seeking for new sources of revenue, this admirable epitome of the arguments for and against the separate rating of site values should be most welcome. Mr. Wilson Fox is entirely impartial, but we confess that we approach with some suspicion arguments designed to show that an additional tax on land values—a component of the finished article, a house—will tend to bring more houses into the market. We remember the title of a pamphlet which appeared in an earlier controversy on housing some seventy years ago, "Do not Tax but Untax the Dwellings of the Poor," and later years do not seem to have formulated any wiser maxim. Still, it is open to argument how the burden which public policy is ever increasing on dwellings should be divided, in its first incidence at all events, between ground-landlords, owners, and occupiers. It is not possible to pursue the subject under better or more competent guidance than that of Mr. Wilson Fox, whose work as secretary to Lord Balfour's Commission has afforded him unrivalled oppor- tunity for mastering the facts and arguments of the ease.
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