ANOTHER HEAVY LOAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 207, 2 September 1938, Page 6

ANOTHER HEAVY LOAD.

The worker is not a shareholder in companies, said the Minister of Finance during his reply to the debate on the Social Security Bill, and since, with very few exceptions indeed, all New Zealanders are workers with hand or brain, or both, there is little to fear, in his opinion, in the way of lost votes, from increasing the staggering burden already imposed upon the companies which do so much to provide employment for the worker. So he adds another load to the top-heavy pile, and calls upon companies to pay another shilling in the pound. Mr. Nash must know that there is no ground for asserting that the worker is not a shareholder also. Thousands upon thousands of shares in industrial companies are held by workers; the small average holding of shares even in the largest companies operating in New Zealand is proof of that. At a time when members of the Government have so much to say upon the necessity for establishing and encouraging secondary industries in order to do away with unemployment and to increase the home market for the primary producer, it is daily discovering fresh ways of making it more difficult for existing companies to carry on and discouraging the investment of funds in the establishment of new manufactures. Already companies pay two-thirds of the income tax total; in one year, 1936-37, their assessments rose by £1,300,000 to £4,071,509, devouring in that year almost two-thirds of the increase in company income. The Social Secui-ity tax is income tax under another name, and at a time when costs are reaching stratospheric levels another very serious handicap is being placed upon those enterprises which the Government itself claims require most encouragement and which do so mnoh to provide employment for the urban population.