FINANCE AND PARLIAMENT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 64, 16 March 1944, Page 4

FINANCE AND PARLIAMENT

THE British Chancellor of the Exchequer brings down his Budget, involving thousands of millions, a few days after the opening of the financial year. As a result private citizen and industrial company alike know at the beginning of the year just how much, or how little, of the income will remain after the tax gatherer has had his share, and can regulate expenditure and activities accordingly for the whole period. Here we never know how heavy will be the raid until the year is in its fifth month, with the result that company schedules of expenditure are often seriously upset, while the private income taxpayer has found more than once that the provision he has made in advance is inadequate, and that his finances are seriously and needlessly disorganised in the second half of the year. This year we are threatened with even greater delay, for under amendments to the Public Revenues Act authority is being taken to extend the period during which the country can be financed without Parliamentary authority from three to five months, which means that the Budget may not be introduced until September, when the year is half through. The present Government is not responsible for the system, it is inherited, but when in Opposition it protested very vigorously and persistently against an old tradition, which it has done nothing to break down. Many arguments could no doubt be offered against reforming the bad system. There are obvious difficulties, but the problems of the general public have been multiplied over and over again, and there is no justification for departmental insistence that all the difficulties shall be shuffled on to the shoulders of the taxpayer just because in a lesser degree it has been done before. If the Estimates were tackled in time the Budget could be prepared just as speedily as in England, and to suggest its further postponement because Mr. Nash is away and Mr. Fraser is to visit England is to show very little consideration for those who provide the millions which the Government increasingly demands from them. If Mr. Nash's presence is an essential to Budget preparation he could, and should, have sent a substitute to Washington until he had his figures ready. If he had done so we would have had an early Budget, no matter how great were the Treasury's difficulties.