Retarding Seen

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30447, 22 May 1964, Page 10

Retarding Seen

The present system of taxation in New Zealand was retarding expansion of agricultural production, Professor W. E. Candler, professor of agricultural economics and farm management at Massey University, told farmers attending the Lincoip College farmers’ conference yesterday. “The present system of progressive taxation so distorts the true profitability of at least some farm development

programmes, that they will simply not be undertaken by individual farmers, even though they are extremely profitable to the nation as a whole," he said. “If we continue with progressive taxation in its present form, we must expect very many farms to continue to produce at about 50 per cent of capacity, because as much as five-sixths of the benefit of increased production goes in practice to the Inland Revenue Department. “More liberal tax deductions and the abolition of death duties would improve the situation, but basically progressive taxation is incompatible with providing incentives for increased agricultural production.”