Cause Of Dominion's Problems

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVII, Issue 15057, 18 August 1949, Page 3

Cause Of Dominion's Problems

High Taxation Level Blamed

Address To Dunedin Chamber

(P.A.) Dunedin, Aug. 17. "The collective results of the Dominion's productive efforts in the last four years have not measured up to expectations or possibilities," said the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, Mr Frank Wilson, in an address to the Dunedin chamber. "Although it is true that, superficially, gross income and wages have been records, it is also true that, to a considerable degree, this condition is largely illusory when measured in terms of real values. Similarly, though record money returns have resulted from this country's exports in recent years, little by comparison has been put by against prospective overseas price ai\d trade recessions." . The predominant causes of the major problems which the country was facing today were, he considered, the high level and penal rates of taxation, coupled with continued excessively-high State expenditure, the system of import selection, restriction and control, and the maintenance of unnecessary and restrictive price controls, more properly termed profit controls. "The existing scale of taxation is the major cause of the prevailing high prices on the one hand and the reduced buying power of money in the hands of the people on the other," said Mr Wilson. "Industry bluntly declares high prices today do not result from company or producers' profits, but arc due in the largest degree to the penal taxation which the Government continues to take from the pockets of everybody, directly and indirectly. "Furthermore, the Government's policy of high taxation operates to defeat its own avowed objective of increasing the value and volume of goods and services, because the principal incentive to both employers and employees to increased effort is profit and reward for such effort."