TO BE REDUCED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 235, 4 October 1937, Page 13

TO BE REDUCED.

RACING TAXATION. MR. STEVENS GIVES WAY. i LOWER ADMISSION PRICES ? (From Our Correspondent.) SYDNEY, September 30. The Premier has had many difficult questions to answer while preparing his Budget, but perhaps the most delicate and complicated of all was the matter of racing taxation. For a long time past the racing clubs and the bookmakers have been urging the Government to reduce the heavy taxes imposed on them. Mr. Stevens was in a difficult position, partly because this form of taxation is an easy and perennial source of revenue and partly because his close association with the churches here makes it embarrassing for him to do anything directly or indirectly to assist "gambling." However, the Premier had given a vague and conditional promise that "something would be done" and when an influential deputation of bookmakers waited upon him requesting the repeal of the turnover tax he gave them some ground for hoping that help would be forthcoming for them before the spring meeting. They were bitterly disappointed, however, when the Budget was found to contain no proposal for reduction, but a hint that it might be necessary to increase racing taxation after all. There was a vehement outcry from the "bookies" and the racing clubs and their influential political friends, and when Mr. Moverloy (United Australia party member for Randwick) tried to get the matter before the Legislative Assembly the other day for public discussion the Premier gave way. | Rich Source of Income. ; Though Mr. Stevens has not fully com--1 mitted himself yet on all details, it is i now understood t'l at reductions are to [ be made on the bookmakers' turnover tax and the totalisator tax, and that corresponding reductions will be made in the price of admission by the racing clubs. The total receipts from racing taxation for 1937-8 are estimated at £405,000, and the totalisator tax and the bookmakers' tax are each expected to yield £125,000. It is obvious that a Government budgeting for a surplus must deal carefully with such valuable sources of revenue as these, and it is easy to understand Mr. Stevens' reluctance to touch them.

The pressure on the Government! within the JJ. A.P. party, however, proved irresistible. Many of the Government's supporters fear that the Premier, after concentrating vigorously on the suppression of starting-price betting largely in the interests of the racing clubs, would 1 not see the necessity for making legal betting on the courses more popular by reducing taxation, but now that the Government has decided to reduce the totalisator tax the bookmakers' turnover tax and also the racecourse admission tax —worth £90,000 a year—it will expect the racing clubs to lower admission prices by at least the amount of that reduction, and to make efforts to render the racecourses and the meetings more attractive and popular in other ways. It is rather a serious paradox that Mr. Stevens, who hates gambling in all its forms, should find himself forced to make all these concessions, but taking the present political situation into account this is no doubt one of the wisest steps that he could have taken. j