INEQUITABLE!

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 30, 6 February 1928, Page 5

INEQUITABLE!

INCIDENCE OF INCOME TAX.

EQUALITY BASIS WANTED.

MR. J. H. UPTON'S VIEWS,

Iu the course of his annual report to shareholders of the Auckland Gas Company the chairman, Mr. J. H. Upton, referred to the inequitable incidence of the income tax whereby the company's very active rivals, the Auckland Electric Power Board, were exempted, while the Gas Company paid £17,500. It was a differential tax only found in halfcivilised countries. Royal and Parliamentary commissions, the considered opinions of Chambers of Commerce all over the Dominion, and now, last and most significant of all. the Economic Conference of the League of Nations at Geneva, having no uncertain tones upheld the principle that all industry, whether carried on by private persons or by any Government, general or municipal, should be taxed on the same basis of equality.

"But our Government is superior to all that," said Mr. Upton, "and is a law unto itself and no redress is made. Consider what would happen were the Government to extend its operations a little further, for our industry is by no means the only victim even now, and undertake the whole business of the country, banking, brewing, printing, shipping, building, merchanting, ctc., of our daily life, and apply the same method of exemption as is now applied to municipal and Government trading, where would the public revenue come from ?

'"All business would be exempt and then the necessary revenue Mould have to be found by lawyers, agents and teachers of all sorts, doctors and editors of newspapers, by the professional classes, in fact, aided by any unfortunate old people who, under happier circumstance . had saved a few pounds for their old o/' said Mr. Upton.