PAY RECEIVED UNDER PROTEST

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 201, 24 August 1940, Page 5 (Supplement)

PAY RECEIVED UNDER PROTEST

National Military Reserve Acts IT is safe to say that no man pr woman can be adequately paid for fighting in defence of his or her country, and few Governments would regard what is sjiven to the fighting services as payment. Rather is it a token of appreciation of the sentiments that have actuated the man who serves. In this and the la it war there were what are called eonscripte, who did not want to fight, yet who, under the laws of their country, had to give their services, and for this they received the same remuneration as those who had voluntarily assumed the responsibilities and the dangers of war service for their ideals. Aβ a token that their services were highly prized and inadequately paid, men on service for their country have been relieved from all the burdens of civic taxation, which have been carried by others not on service. Soldiers' pay has always been exempt from taxation. New Zealand, however, has earned yet another distinction in imposing taxation on the pay of a section of its defenders, namely, the National Military Reserve, Glass 11., recruited from men who served in the last war. The men on service overseas and the men of the territorial forces are exempt from taxation on their pay, which makes it the more amazing, and in fact grossly unfair, that the grim hand of the tax collector should have descended on the men of the N.M.R., leaving out of consideration altogether that some of them had four years and more of service in the last war. When the men were paid on Saturday last, Social Security tax and National Security tax were deducted. The pay for men. of the N.M.R. aggregates £14, and the men, besides paying national taxes on their military pay, have to meet the Social Security tax and the National Security tax on their ordinary wages. In addition, their military pay will he added when assessing income for taxation, and here again they will be "blistered." perhaps to a substantial degree, for it is quite possible that the £14 that the Government has promised for their services may put them out of one class of income tax payer into a higher grade that may mean a very substantial sum. Some heinous injustices have been perpetrated against soldiers and sailors from time to time. One remembers when a soldier in the last war was killed in action. His field paybook had to be balanced, of course, before being returned to regimental pay office, and, as the soldier had been buried behind the lines and his blanket used as his shroud, his deceased estate was charged with the price of the blanket. Only the storm of public indignation that followed the exposure of such a shocking practice brought the Imperial Government to its senses and caused the withdrawal of the iniquitous charge against a soldier's burial. The N.M.R. have every cause to vehemently resent the Finance Minister's "grab,' and the men at Auckland agreed to sign for their pay last week only under protest, and would not have even gone this far but that they were assured

the matter was to be looked into. If the Government wishes to gain the services of men who know what war is, and know something, too, of the art of defence, they must show no such unreasonable discrimination against one particular class of soldier. If the home defence plans of the Government are genuine and in earnest, such parsimony and altogether .unjust imposition mu?t be immediately abolished.