The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News. The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1940. TAXING 7/8 FROM £3 16/

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 153, 29 June 1940, Page 8

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

SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1940. TAXING 7/8 FROM £3 16/

For the came that lacks atitMtanoc, For the icrong that reedt resistance, For the future in Che distance, And the good that tee can do.

The basic wage for adult male workers in this country is £3 16/ per week. The earnings of many workers exceed this sum, but it is supposed to be sufficient to maintain a man, his Avife and their three children in a fair and reasonable standard of comfort. From this family's income the State already takes 3/10, and shortly, when the national security tax is collected, it will take 7/8. If the three children are all under the age of 16 years, the State at present hands back 4/, by way of family allowance, and after the new tax is operative it will hand back 8/, so that, in theory at least (if the cost of living rises no higher) the family will be no worse off. In fact, again in theory, it will bo better off —twopence a week better off. But the question is whether the State, which ought to be very strongly concerned at all times with the welfare of the family, has any right to take 7/8 from an income of £3 16/ when that income has to meet the needs of two adults and three children.

This question should be considered by all persons whose income is greater than £3 16/, and particularly by those of them who have to support a wife and one child, or a wife only, or neither. Is this Dominion so poor that its Government must take 10 per cent of the lowest incomes of its people? Ate those more fortunate persons satisfied in conscience that the State should do so, even if the State leaves the head of the family with fourpence more than he has earned f The harder the new taxation is felt by the more fortunate to be, the stronger is the argument for relieving those less fortunate. But —the retort may be—relief cannot be given except by still greater State expenditure. Does anybody believe— the Government sincerely contend that is true? It would be true only if the expenditure now proposed were all for essential purposes. Notoriously, it is not so. The Budget reveals, broadly, that the . Government is trying to meet a huge war expenditure, on top of a huge civil expenditure, without making an adequate attempt to reduce the latter. Instead, to raise the money, it is using the method which it knows and likes best —the method of extra taxation. A Government which for more than four years has been spending freely finds it difficult to economise. Is this Government, in fact, capable of economising? Does it know the meaning of the word ? The answer is surely indicated in the Budget. . The Government knows only how to tax and spend. Rather than make a serious effort to economise, it is prepared to double the taxes of the poorest families in the country—and to call it a "war sacrifice."