HEAVY TAXATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 288, 5 December 1929, Page 23

HEAVY TAXATION.

AUSTRALIANS GROAN. ABUSE FOB THEODORE. A NEAT NICKNAME. (By the "Star's" Special Representative.) SYDNEY, November 27. "Thievedore" is a pungent nickname Australians have conferred upon Mr. Theodore, the Federal Treasurer. Australians do not like direct taxation— •fflich is no wonder, seeing they are taxed both by a Commonwealth GovernmeDt and a State Government—and they are not slow to express anger. They think protection a very fine thing— "Let's help our own industries—shut out forei"" goods." It's later that they wako to the fact that they pay taxation indirectly through the Customs. Then it's so roundabout a fact that it isn't worth following. You don't want to give the average Australian too much to think about. He can't be bothered with too much in the serious line when he has s0 many beaches, and so many races, and so many cricket matches to employ his vast intellect. But you get to his pocket in a direct manner and ce e what happens! Between Two Fires. . Dr. Earle Page, most unpopular of Federal Treasurers —up till now—had proposed to strike with a super-tax all incomes exceeding £2000. But Mr. Theodore, who was the great panjandrum of taxation when Premier and Treasurer of Queensland, goes almost the whole hog better. He is attacking with 'additional'levies all net incomes exceeding £450, and from this application of financial genius he expects to get £1,000,000 more than Earl Page budgeted for. But what will be the effect on industry when business men, so heavily taxed, begin to reduce expenditure. Industrial development produces far more income than does taxation on the wealth that it attacks in the first instance and so prevents being invested in production. And the wage-earners— or salary-drawers, if you like—whose net income is between £450 and £1000 a year, how are they going to feel it between the fires of direct heavy taxation and the indirect heavy taxation that is certain to be imposed consequent on a high protective tariff? Their expenditure, too, will be curtailed, and trading conditions prejudicially affected. More of the "vicious circle."

Certainly if the Government is giving employment with one hand in imposing a high protective tariff, it is taking it away with the other in high direct taxation of companies and private individuals. It is plain we have no "Wizard of Finance" in this new Government, however splendid its intentions, and the fear is that it may hi true (as was mentioned by me in a dispatch prior to the Federal elections) that in Mr. Theodore, who so messed up the finances of Queensland, when he had the reins of Government in that State, we may find a calamity. "This Bushranger." It takes the "Sydney Morning Herald" ■:to "get down to tin tacks" where Mr. Theodore is concerned. "The fourteenyears story of his taxation in Queensland," says to-day's leading article in Australia's foremost newspaper, "is a ipeaking example of the consequences of his financial methods. He is repeating them in a wider sphere. The people of Australia have the first instalment of Mr. Theodore's company and income ■taxation, and Queensland will reinforce the prophecy that they will rue the day they ever made the mistake of supposing, selfishly, that this bushranger of a Treasurer is their friend." The "Herald" then quotes Mr. Theodore as having stated in his election appeal that the family man pays his taxes through the Customs Department, en clothes, food and tobacco, that the Bruce Government had enormously increased these taxes, but Labour would evolve a tariff that would shut out imports -without adding to the taxation of the worker. "Elected on this sort of •hypocrisy," he budgets for 4U millions, the highest Customs and Excise revenue ever exacted in the history of Australia! "Does any sane man," asks the "Herald," suppose that a war-time levy on private incomes and a 20 per cent increase <W private enterprise—such sources Ming tie only known providers of reliable employment—will help to increase employment! .... Every trades union in the land will apply without delay for higher wages on the-ground of increased cost of living. . . ." The paper adds one for the Prime Minister: "With puerile simplicity, the Prime Minister 'warns' local manufacturers that they must not increase prices. The Trades Hall will Won 'blow that warning to pieces." The inference, of course, is that the Trades Hall, by demanding higher wages, will itself force up the cost of production. The "Herald" is particularly bitter on the escape of amusements from additional taxation, and as Auckland is so interested in the pictures, I may be pardoned from quoting further from this toost conservative, yet most outspoken, newspaper:—

; Fierce Attack on American Films. : "A responsible statesman or even the ordinary intelligent citizen, would preJJUDe that, in these times of depression, "there were one luxury, foreign in wealthy almost to indecency— deserving of taxation by the very drain j* niakes on Australian earnings weekly to foreign pockets and quite profitlessly w> this country—it would be the Hollywood film enterprise. There can be no «euae for letting that foreign interest 8° free, least of all from a party avowthe principles of the Labour party •«s Australia has always known it. The . lm industry is exploiting Australia to "« utmost. It opens its theatres all T onnd the daylight clock and half the Up to 65 per cent of its gross takings go to the so-called ' Australian distributing companies,' well over a millOa sterling of the gross takings from ev ery Australian's every attendance is earmarked for the United States. Yet will not tax it. Labour boasts "M its sentiment's are still British; yw if the National party had proposed 0 exempt from taxation any such exPloitation of this country by a wealthy Jfritish trust there Avould have been a *° w l of execration. This ugly blot on *j>e Labour Budget, outrageous as it is elsewhere, is nothing less than a of Australia."