The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1930. UNEMPLOYMENT AND TAXATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 101, 1 May 1930, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo

THURSDAY, MAY 1, 1930. UNEMPLOYMENT AND TAXATION.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the tcrcng that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

Sir Harold Beauchamp can generally be depended on to supply instructive and illuminating advice on all matters connected with public finance, and his contribution to the controversy over the Unemployed Relief Commission's report is well worthy of careful consideration. It is important to note that Sir Harold Beauchamp accepts the principle of "equality of sacrifice" laid down by the Commission. This is an admission that unemployment is a matter which entails responsibilities not on the workers alone, or on the workers and employers exclusively, but on the whole community. He is therefore prepared to accept a relief scheme embodying contributions from every class and section of the population. But he objects to the proposed poll tax on the ground that it is vexatious and will prove difficult to collect, and he thinks it possible to provide the basis for an unemployment relief fund by other taxation.

In place of the poll tax Sir 11. Beauchamp suggests Customs duties of Id per lb on sugar and 3d per lb on tea; and he refuses to take seriously the arguments usually advanced in favour of "a free breakfast table." It may be that such. taxation would not make much difference to the average worker's purchasing power or to his "family budget," But the fact remains that in principle indirect taxation is fundamentally inequitable, because it cannot be graduated or adjusted to the spending capacity of the taxpayer. It is easy to illustrate the injustice of a tax on the necessaries of life. Hartley Withers, who is definitely anti-Socialist in his outlook, maintains, in his well-known text book, "Our Money and the State," that it is most unjust to compel a charwoman with five children to pay precisely the same amount of taxation as a millionaire on every pound of sugar or pound of tea that they buy, and the principle is quite universal in its application. The tendency in all progressive countries in modern times is to reduce indirect taxation and to raise the maximum amount of revenue by direct taxes; and Sir H. Beauchamp's proposal would therefore be, from the standpoint of fiscal policy, a step in the wrong direction.