FAILURE TO GIVE TAX RELIEF

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25270, 23 August 1947, Page 10

FAILURE TO GIVE TAX RELIEF

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE CRITICISM

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, August 22. “The Budget will be received with great disappointment by all sections of the community because of its abject failure to give taxation relief,” said Mr Haskell Anderson, president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, to-day. “The people will not permanently surrender to the peace-time maintenance of war-time taxes, and everybody was looking confidently to this year’s financial statement to afford relief from pressure. The one tax concession which is given—on the lowest rungs of the so-called unearned income, benefiting a few thousand people—is contemptuous beyond the commendation due to it as an implied token recognition at long last by the Government of the complete unfairness of the tax discrimination against the socalled unearned income (in reality income hard-earned by the thrifty). The obvious national case for taxation relief has been spurned £31,000.000 in War Taxes “For the second year in succession the Governtneni is coolly raising and using approximately £31.000.00 in war taxes, not for use on war purposes at all but on civilian and peace-time extravagances and. in expanding the already heavily inflated public service. “Last year the Government spent an extra £5.000 000 on expanding Government departments, and now Mr Nash proposes to step up this expenditure by another £1 000.000. This is withholding from the people with a vengeance their own money.

“Most amazing of al] is the position of subsidies. The Court of Arbitration was recently virtually invited by the Minister to increase wage rates because he intended to abolish certain subsidies Now the Budget makes no provision for the abolition of those subsidies at any given date, so that if they are abolished the Minister will have a surplus on the year’s operations of the amount of the subsidies, namely, £13.500.000. If these sub; sidies were abolished immediately, then, in view of the fact that five months of the current financial year h-v» already the Minister would have a Budget surplus of £7.750.000 from unspent subsidies up to March 31 next. At the same time people are being -required to carry taxes to provide subsidies which are not to be snent. Not an 'lncentive Budget” “New Zealand is at the present moment urgently considering what stringent national measures it can take to aid the United Kingdom. The Budget limns behind the urgencies of the situation. “The Minister of Finance talks in his Budget of incentive and the need to find ways and means quickly of galvanising our people into greater activity to increase outnut and maintain the standard of living. He has that in bis own bands. He could have produced pn incentive Budget to ensure it, but his Budget offers no encouragement to effort.

“In view of the money which it has at its command we urge that the Government 'reconsider the whole of its financial nronosals for the current year and bring down a supplementary and amending Budget based on oconnmv and incentive, which will deal with real issues in a rea] way, by nroviding for 4 he substantial reductions in taxation which the Government is fully capable of making.”