NEW SCALE OF TAXES

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29008, 24 September 1959, Page 12

NEW SCALE OF TAXES

Apportionment Not Necessary

Many persons, some pay clerks included, have not appreciated that when the new P.A.Y.E. scale of tax deductions Come into effect next Thursday there will not need to be a calculation of old rates for part of a pay period. The new rates will apply on any pay day after and including October 1, and the rate of tax. notwithstanding that the income has been earned in a previous period, will be at the lower rate. This will apply to all cases except where payments are made monthly. In that case there will have to be a calculation of the time worked before October 1 at the old rates, and the new rates will apply for the portion of the pay period thereafter. When the tax tables were altered in October of last year there was apportionment of the tax—so many days at the old rate, and so many at the new. At that adjustment the Government was taking considerably more tax; this October it is giving some of it back.

Persons on weekly wages and whose wages are paid on Thursday, for a week ending on Wednesday, will fit exactly into the new scheme.

No-one can lose, and many will gain through the abandonment of apportionment of wages. Members of the Public Service are paid fortnightly, and their next pay will be on October 7. They will hcve the week’s pay up to September 30 subject to tax deductions at tha new reduced rates although the wages have been earned in the period still covered by the present tax tables. Pay clerks appreciate the concession, which will save them a lot of calculating. Many of them will regard it as some compensation for the fact that on October 12 they will have to make a second set of calculations within a fortnight, for that is the date on which the new general wage order of the Court of Arbitration will take effect.