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37
The payments to Central Authorities last year amounted
to £5,632 15s. 9d. more than for the previous year,
and to 991 15s. 7d. more than for the year 1886-7.
It will be seen that of the total sum raised under the name
of local rates, a very small proportion is applicable to strictly
local expenditure, no less than £96,481 0s. 4d. of the total
of £149,529 3s. 1d. having been paid over during the year
to various authorities over whose expenditure the Vestry
and other Parochial Boards have no control. In other
words, out of every shilling raised as local rates in St.
James's, less than fivepence is spent by the Parochial
Authorities.
An important alteration in the incidence of local taxation
has been made by the Local Government Act. The greater
part of the money raised by the Metropolitan Board of
Works was raised as a sewers rate, and, in the absence of an
agreement to the contrary, was recoverable as such by the
occupier from the owner of the property assessed. The
Local Government Act, however, directs that the expenses
of the Council (in which are included the expenses formerly
raised by the Metropolitan Board of Works) shall be raised
as a County rate, that is, wholly from the occupier and without
any partial or total exemption, such as land and certain
other properties are entitled to in the case of a sewers rate.
This alteration does not affect the ratepayers of St. James's
to any great extent, and its importance lies rather (so far as
this Parish is concerned) in a departure from an old principle
of rating and transferring to the occupier of property a
burden hitherto borne by the owner.
The Vestry have on many occasions suffered considerable
loss in rates from frequent changes of the occupier of licensed
premises, owing to the incoming tenant repudiaiing the