The Economy of Local Rates 189 
is let on terms which involve the hirer paying an 
additional sum for those rights. The services supplied 
by local authorities are not and cannot be made an 
exception to the rule: if rates are simply transferred 
from occupiers to owners, occupiers will pay that much 
more in rents, the capital value of land remaining the 
same, for the obvious reason that the net annual return 
1s unaltered. 
The most plausible argument 1n favour of the view 
that mere occupiers would benefit at the expense of 
property-owners is to be found in the allegation that 
they would be benefited by a fall in the value of land 
not yet built on in the outskirts of towns. At present 
such land is rated in proportion to the actual income 
from it, and when it is, as it usually is, agricultural 
land, only at half or a quarter of that income. Now 
it constantly happens that the anticipation of the 
growth of a town leads to the capital value of such 
land being much above the usual number of years’ 
purchase of the actual income obtainable at the 
monient. Consequently under the proposed scheme 
such land would be chargeable with much more rates 
than now, both absolutely and in comparison with land 
already built on. If would bring in no more than at 
present, and therefore its capital value, and also the 
amount which a tenant undertaking the payment of 
rates would have to pay as rent to the landlord, would 
be less than at present. From these unquestionable 
premises supporters of the scheme draw the quite 
erroneous deduction that the owners would tumble 
over each other in anxiety to sell, and land would 
therefore come cheaper to those who wish to build on 
it. They overlook the fact that while the change from