TAXATION BURDEN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 39, 25 November 1937, Page 7

TAXATION BURDEN.

THE EFFECT UPON TRADE. t FATAL TO ECONOMIC LIFE. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Nov. 24. Referring to taxation, Mr Henry Kitson (President of the New Zealand Stock Exchange), addressing members of the Association, said that State and local taxation takes 27.6 per cent, or 5s 6d in the £ of the total value of production in New Zealand. He said that in recent years New Zealand statesmen, like many others, had been thinking in terms of economic nationalism. History witnessed that this policy, carried to its ultimate conclusion, was fatal to the economic life of a country that has borrowed from overseas large sums for development in the past and still requires foreign capital to carry out necessary development and increased production. No Government could be expected to be able to borrow internally and keep the increasing percentage taken in the form of taxes from production. It was correspondingly difficult to induce outside Capital to be invested in a country where taxation becomes severe and out of proportion. Trade was being stifled not only by taxation, but also by the setting up of trade barriers by quotas, by exchange control, by licences, and by clearing arrangements which were as a barbed-wire drawn across the field of trade. Confidence in the near and distant future required - healthy trading conditions in this country.