Talk:Dog Tax War

Untitled
Was this the best war ever? What a pity it didn't serve as a model for the conduct of later conflicts. Ping 09:09 Apr 17, 2003 (UTC)

Is phoned the right word in the 6th paragraph? should it be sent a telegram?

Westleyan
I'm pretty sure that should be Wesleyan. The only search result for Westleyan in New Zealand is an OCR error on PapersPast from scanning the Northern Advocate. Looking at the image of the original the word is clearly Wesleyan. dramatic (talk) 04:59, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Dog Tax in perspective
At this early period in NZ history taxation was structured very differently to now. At this time very few Maori paid any tax as they were not generally involved in large scale farming, commerce or industry. Local taxes or rates were more common and set by local councils often for specific projects. Most of the rates were raised to improve services like drains and roads or gas lighting in urban areas where there were a lot of people to pay the tax and enjoy the benefits. Maori generally still lived separately in their own rural rohe and did not pay rates. The ammount of rates tax overall was very small. In that period most Maori still lived a largely subsistence life growing crops to eat and fishing and hunting for their own meat. A few in each hapu would do casual work for farmers or labour on roads seasonally to buy food items like flour, sugar as well as rum and tobacco. The latter three had quite high tax content. A very few would accept a sub contract to build a section of road. But this could be fraught with difficulty as road building was still viewed with suspicion by many of the hapu or iwi that had backed the Kingitanga movement or later joined the Hau hau rebellion. They associated roads with the speedy movement of troops able to crush insurrections. Tuhoe would not allow any roads to be built in their rohe but Tuhoe men would work on roads for cash in the adjacent Wakatohea rohe. Small seasonal incomes were totally exempt from tax-most tax came from custom duties. Generally taxes collectively were tiny compared to now.