TAXING THE MOTORIST.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 243, 13 October 1936, Page 6

TAXING THE MOTORIST.

It is all very well for tlie president of the Automobile Association, as reported in Thursday's "Star," to sigh for the time when "motorists would obtain some more adequate return for the excessive taxation imposed by fees and taxes on tyres and petrol," but there is another aspect of the petition. According to the latest official figures available, there was expended on roads £t3,845,000 for the year. Of this the ratepayers found £2,319,000, and also borrowed £089,000, for which they are responsible. Unemployment and general taxes provide £2,420,000, leaving only £1,417,000 to be met by the motorists, but as the Legislature confused the position by appropriating £1,580,000 of motor taxation to the Consolidated Fund, the motorists really found £2,997,000 towards the total road expenditure of £0,845,000. This covered the cost of maintenance, £2,025,000, together with much less than half the cost of construction, £2,465,000, and not a penny towards the interest and sinking fund charges, £2,355,000, nor a penny towards the rent or rates on the roads they used. Compare this with the trams. The people who use them pay the whole cost of maintenance, construction and interest, and in some districts rates to the local bodies also, without leaving the ratepayers or the taxpayers to pay anything. Why the glaring difference in treatment? Compare this with the railways also. Passengers and goods by rail pay the whole cost of maintenance and construction, and even buy the land in many cases, but because, after paying the necessary superannuation subsidy, there was only a balance of £1.051,477 towards the interest last year, there is a complaint all over the Dominion that "the railways don't pay." When motor transport, the most extravagant means of travel that has so far come into general use in Xew Zealand, pays all its charges and as large a proportion towards interest as the railways do, it will be quite time enough to complain that railways don't pay, and that motorists pay too much. VIATOR.