The Press. Monday, May 7, 1917. War Taxation.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 15894, 7 May 1917, Page 6

The Press. Monday, May 7, 1917. War Taxation.

The tax on butter-fat so well illustrates the cardinal weakness of tho Government's handling of the financial and economic problems set by the war that we need not make any excuse for returning to tho. subject. The tax. as we have on previous occasions made clear, cannot be defended as a thing which, liowevei" inconvenient and however fruitful of hardships, is nevertheless a measuro of assistance to the British Government alid tho men at tho front. It is simply a tax on the butter producers for the benefit of the local consumers of butter, who are treated as having a right to consume a3 1 much butter as usual at as low a price as can be managed for them. The onjy way in whi?n the Government could help the people of Britain and the men in tlie "trenches in this matter would be to facilitate the export of all the butter that can be produced. Tho more that is sent, the further the supply ait Homo will go towards meeting the demand, and the less the price would rise. Yet actually the Government's policy amounts to tho penalising of export. A Wellington paper which vigorously supports the levy on butter-fat is actually able to do so while at the same time emphasising the contrast between this "prosperous—almost pam- " pered—country" and a Mother Country "faced with the most imminent " forms of war-losses and food-short-"age." Yet the express purpose of the levy is to tako care that the foodshortage at Home shall not be relieved at the cost of a littld sacrifice by this pampered community! Tho Minister himself has said so. "If the Govern- " ment had not taken some such " steps," he told tho deputation that waited on him tho other day, "th© re- " suit of the conditions would have been "that all the butter of tile country "would have been exported." And whatever happens to Britain, the Now Zealand consumer must have all the butter ho can swallow at only 4Jd a pound more than he paid for it before the war. Is it want of candour, or merely confusion of thought, that represents this levy as a necessary war measure ? Is it net rather an antiwar measure, since its avowed purpose is to cheek the turning-on of our full dairv-power for the benefit of Britain ?

Nor nro tho Ministers and his friends any more happy in their appeal to what they aro pleased to call the super-pros-pority of tho farmer. Of• course tho people on tho land are on the whole doing well. but so, too. are the conj sUmors. Bitter complaints were being mado about the butter-fat levy and [other taxes, the Minister said, but

" the simple fact -was that no man in " this country except those who had " lost relatives had suffered at all by " this war. By comparison with the "people of other countries, the people '•of New Zealand were living in I'ara- " disc. With prices as they were, he "could rot 3cc that the farmer had any "ground for complaint." "With the Minisicr's estimat-j of the actual condition of the poople of this country nobody c-an disagree, but could there bo a greater confusion of mind than is shown in this failure to observe that the consideration which should silence the farmer should at the same time silence the consumers of butter? The truth of tho whole matter is thnt the Government, regardless of, and indeed in defiance of. their duty of facilitating the export of food to the Mother Country, have provided—as a war measure, of all things! -•-for the payment by a minority, the butter-producers, of a certain sum of money to the majority, the buiter-cot;. sunu'rs. And this., in one form er another, is true of tiro whole of the .wartaxation imposed '>" the Government. If wc assume, as wo or.sh-, that the existence of .i slate of war has created n direct financial liability in respect of everybody to whom the war will menr. liberty or ruin, then the Government are again taking money from a minority (tin payers of wartaxation) to pay .lie debts of tho majority (the non-payers of war-taxa-tion 1 ). That every elas.". every section, must pay its share t»f the coat of this war is the principle upon which the wartaxation of Britain has been based. Mr Masscy and Sir Joseph Ward have been in Britain long enough clearly to rccognise this. Wc trust that when they return thev will bring back that principle as the most practical of the lessons they have learned, and will sec to it that it comes into operation here.