"Inquirer" in our eorrespondence column raises an interesting point in connexion with Chinese residing in the International Settlement without paying taxes, though the position is not quite as he states it. There is a number of Chinese owning land in the Settlement whose holdings are not registered in any foreign consulate. While these people pay the municipal rate, they do not pay the municipal land tax. In a letter written by the municipal secretary, Mr. N. 0. Liddell, on October 19, and published in the Municipal Gazette on November 4, the position is made clear:—
All land situate within Settlement limits, whether registered in a Foreign Consulate or not, is liable to municipal taxation and that although the Council has not up to the present concerned itself asa general rule with the taxation of land until it has come on to a Foreign Consular Register, it has only done so in continuance of the policy adopted in he early days of the Settlement, when unregistered land was almost.' whole agricultural and considered not' worth while taxing, as the revenue which it would have produced would probably not have covered the cost of collection, The letter goes on to state that the Council contemplates bringing ul unregistered land under taxation at an early date for times have changed and the considerations which actuated its policy in the early days of the Settlement no longer apply.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.