Expenditures of the Russo-Japanese war / by Gotaro Ogawa.

72 EXPENDITURES OF THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

object of lightening them. Thus, the Hokkaido and the prefectural governments and certain public bodies in Hokkaido
and Okinawa were permitted only to surtax land up to 50 per
cent of the land tax, or 40 sen on an average on a tan (0.245 acre)
of land. The maximums allowed to the other public bodies
were 30 per cent on the land tax, or 40 sen on an average on a
tan of land. In cases where both surtaxing the land tax and
surtaxing by the tan were resorted to, the total of the two was
not allowed to exceed 50 per cent of the land tax with the
former bodies and 30 per cent of the same with the latter.
With regard to the business and income taxes, the public bodies, except the Hokkaido and the prefectural governments, were
prohibited from surtaxing them more than 30 per cent. In
this way efforts were made to lessen the burden of local taxes
in order to secure satisfactory results in the war-time taxation.
Direct taxes
In order to meet the exigencies of the war finance, the direct taxes, viz., taxes on land, business, income, mining, the
patent-medicine trade, and shooting licenses, were raised and
a succession tax was created as a permanent tax.
Land formerly had been taxed uniformly. Whether it was
land for building houses in cities, provincial towns or villages,
or whether it was other kinds of land, the rate had been in
every case 2.5 per cent of the assessed value of the land.
After the war with China, that is, from 1899 to I903, a further
2.5 per cent was added in the case of building land in cities
and 0.8 per cent in the case of other land. In the first increase of taxes in connection with the Russo-Japanese War,
the rate was again increased by 1.8 to 5.5 per cent, and in the
second increase by 1.2 to 12 per cent, so that the war-time
rates of the land tax ranged between 3 and I7.5 per cent.
The value of building land, especially in cities, had risen
to such an extent, in consequence of the economic development of the nation, that the legal price of land became
merely nominal. Import duties on rice, hulled or unhulled,
wheat, beans and other agricultural products had been