"BEING BLED WHITE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 7

"BEING BLED WHITE."

DOMINION TAXPAYER.

VIOLATION OF UNDERTAKING. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Friday. The introduction in the House of Representatives of an amendment bringing companies into the taxation net for the purpose of the Social Security bill has come as a btunderbolt, save a etatement issued by the Associated Chambers of Commerce. This new development means a heavy increase in the already staggering burden of taxation and costs which is being carried by company enterprise in this country. If any evidence were needed of the utter unsoundness of the financial basis of the present social insurance scheme, it is amply provided by the application of this tax to companies. It is an open confession by the Government that all its expressed confidence in the ability of the country to carry the cost of the scheme by reason of expanding production was merely a smokescreen and emptiness of words. Before the so-called security scheme is even under way the Government is desperately casting about to find the extra money needed to float it, thus violating the undertaking given so recently in the House by the Minister of Finance, the Hon. W. Nash, that, in the opinion of the Government, the scheme could be carried by the country without any increase in taxation. After referring to the successive burdens which have been imposed on companies over the last two years, the statement says that, by bringing companies under'" the social insurance taxation, the Government wae following the old device of bleeding the taxpayer white without letting him know it, by means of indirect taxation, but it was an underrating of the growing knowledge and intelligence of the man in the street.