AUSTRALIAN TAXES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 41, 28 November 1940, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN TAXES.

AN UNPRECEDENTED IMPOST.

OPPOSITION BY LABOUR PARTY

(Received This Day, 1.30 p.m.) CANBERRA, This Day. To finance Australia’s wartime Budget of £276,000,000 rates of taxation unprecedented in Australia’s history will be imposed. Wage and salary earners Avill pay from three to 13 times' more federal tax than they paid last year. The statutory exemption lias been reduced from £250 to £l5O and vanishes on salaries over £3OO The tax which leaps from £5 an a single man ! s income of '£2oo yearly to £147 on a single man’s income of £IOOO yearly, must be paid within six months. A man on a salary of £SOOO yearly, with a wife and child, will pay £1633 in Federal tax and £2466 in the combined Federal and State incomes and wages tax. The Labour Leader (Mr J. Curtin) stated that his Party would ask Parliament to restore the statutory exemption to £250 and to review the incidence of taxation on, the high and lower tax groups and the company tax on large and small companies respectively. He will move for the postponement of the first item of the Estimates in an attempt to force revision of the Budget.

The Treasurer £Mr Fadden) was booed by Labour members when he outlined the new scales of taxation. There were shouts of “shame” and “barefaced robbery.