LONDON PRESS COMMENT

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27131, 29 August 1953, Page 8

LONDON PRESS COMMENT

“RESTORED NATIONAL EARNINGS”

WORLD TREND TO LOWER TAXES SEEN (Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, August 28. Commenting on the New Zealand Budget, the financial editor of “The Times” says that the concessions to taxpayers are in line with indications of something of a trend towards lower taxes in the world at large this year.

“There have been some important exceptions to this trend, as well as considerable differences of aim and emphasis in reliefs as between different countries. In a few countries, reliefs have been possible owing to a capacity to finance rising expenditures out of reduced taxes. “In others, they have been inspired by a desire to give a fillip to consumption in order to take up a certain slack in national production and employment. The more, or less common aim' has been that of restimulating personal savings. “For the New Zealand taxpayer, the chief reliefs are in the middle range of incomes. Two concessions, however, which will arouse special interest, are those in stamp and death duties. “It must be accepted that New Zealand—thanks in part, no doubt, to the recovery of wool vaL.cs in the season just closed —is one of those countries which have been able to lower their taxes because of restored national earnings.” The Daily Telegraph” says there is some solid ground for the tax con-

cessions, which were designed to relieve the pressure on families of moderate income.

"New Zealand’s balance of payments is highly commendable in itself; there is nothing particularly inspiring, however, in the means by which it was achieved.

“Almost the whole amelioration can be put down to a drastic restriction of imports—a step , which, cutting arbitrarily across established trade channels, can only be justified by the lack of an alternative. Our slate in this respect, of course, is no cleaner than New Zealand’s.

“As long as instability in the sterling area compels such periodic dislocations of trade, so long will New Zealand’s economic barometer register ‘fair’ rather than ‘set fair.’

“Finding markets is not likely to be her difficulty for many years to come; A.nat may be difficult is finding capital for expanded production.”