§ MR. LAURENCE HARDY (Kent, Ashford)I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether in the new instructions to the assessors of land tax issued by the Land Tax Commissioners, they have been advised not to assess any lands or tenements which have been treated as exempt or exonerated from land tax for a considerable number of years; whether he is aware that last 885 year in very many cases land tax was assessed and paid upon property which had never paid tax for a great number of years; and, whether he will now take steps to insure that the owners of such property shall not he barred from relief under the new instructions by the fact that they have paid land tax last year, and also that the amount of land tax so charged and paid shall be refunded to them?
§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir MICHAEL HICKS BEACH,) Bristol, W.Complaint was made that last year in many cases where parishes had been reassessed for land tax property was assessed which had never paid land tax for a great number of years past, and therefore the Board of Inland Revenue, on my instructions, issued a circular to Land Tax Commissioners, who are solely responsible for the making of land tax assessments, pointing out the necessity for great care in bringing into charge properties which have never before been charged with land tax, and suggesting that the fact that no land tax had for many years been charged on a particular property might reasonably be regarded as presumptive evidence that the property at one time formed part of an estate in respect of which the owner had redeemed the tax, and inst ructions to this effect have been given to the local assessors. I cannot go further than this, for I have no right to interfere with the discretion of the Land Tax Commissioners in individual cases, and it must be remembered that, owing to the incomplete way in which the land tax assessments have been kept up in some districts, many properties, which ought to have been fully assessed, have in the past escaped their fair share of the quota, to the loss of the other land-tax payers in the parish.