NECESSARIES OF LIFE.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 190, 13 August 1925, Page 16

NECESSARIES OF LIFE.

HOW THF.Y ARE TAXED. (From Our Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. During the concluding stages of the Budget debate one of the budding Ministers of Finance, who are waiting for Mr. Kosworthy's cloak to fall about their shoulders, provided a striking example of the profound ignorance besetting many of the members of the House concerning the fiscal affairs of the Dominion. This zealous guardian of the interests of his eonsituents. while deploring the need for high taxation in other directions, due to the heavy liabilities incurred during the war, found consolation in the "fact" that the necessaries of life in this country were free from duty. This gentleman has been in the House for twelve or fourteen years, and yet he has failed to notice that every one of the articles popularly regarded as the "necessaries of life" are taxed, some of them heavily, through the Customs. The wheat and flour, from which bread is made, are taxed at £2 10/ and £3 per ton respectively, tea at, from 3d to 7d per lb, sugar 2d per lb, oatmeal id per lb, cocoa from 3d to 5d per lb, bacon from 2d to 4d per lb, vegetables from 20 to 3f> per cent ad. val., fruit id per lb, and so on. These duties, of course, are not paid on the locally produced articles, but they are added to the prices at which the local articles are sold.