THE TAX ON COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 9282, 6 December 1895, Page 4

THE TAX ON COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS.

There is great consternation among the " foreign " commercial travellers at present in the colony, who suddenly find themselves called upon to pay a license fee of fifty pounds a head under the Income Tax Act passed last session. They do not complain so much of the tax itself—although they say that in a large number of cases it will simply prohibit them from coming to New Zealand in future—but they do complain very strongly of its having been sprung upon them without notice. Some of them arrived from Melbourne via the Bluff by the last steamer. There were dim rumours in Victoria of such an Act having been passed in New Zealand, but the travellers in question could learn nothing definite about it, and most of the people of whom they enquired scouted the idea of there being a poll tax imposed in this colony upon anybody except Chinamen. Even when they arrived in New Zealand they found that neither at Invercargill nor in Dunedin could the Customs officials tell them when the Act was fixed to come into force. They therefore considered themselves quite safe in doing business. When they reached Christchurch a most unpleasant surprise was sprung upon them in the shape of a notification that the Act was in operation, and a demand for the payment of the fifty pounds. The result is that the majority of them asked to be allowed to pack up their samples and leave the country without doing any business, on the understanding, of course, that they are not to be pressed for the tax. It is

estimated by those competent to judge that only about one in six of the travellers who at present visit New Zealand will find it worth their while to continue now they are subject to the tax.

Whether the Customs Department will allow these gentlemen to depart on the terms stated we do not know, but we certainly think it is a very reasonable request, and should be granted. It is hard enough that they should have wasted time and money in coming to New Zealand, when they would have saved both had due notice been circulated of the passing of the Act. It is still harder if, after being allowed by the Customs to land under the impression that the Act was not yet in force, they should now be called upon to pay the tax, when, if they could have learned about it at the Bluff, they would never have unpacked their samples, and when they are now perfectly ready to leave at once without doing any more business. At present they naturally feel as if they were caught in a trap, and it would be only fair, we think, to give them the chance of getting out of it. Travellers coming here in future would of course stand on a different footing. Knowledge of the tax will soon spread even outside the colony, and, in any case, they will be able to learn about it from the Customs officials at the first port of call. It will then be easy for them to decide whether they will go on and pay the tax, or whether they will turn back without doing business. The gentlemen to whom we referred were actually lulled into false security by the Customs officials in the South, and have been led quits unwittingly into making themselves technically liable for the tax. We therefore think they should have the opportunity of escaping from a position in which they have been placed through no fault of their own.