No Govt Assistance On Payroll Tax

Press, Issue 32345, 10 July 1970, Page 24

No Govt Assistance On Payroll Tax

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, July 9. Government assistance to groups complaining about the effects of the recentlyintroduced payroll tax was unlikely, the Minister of Finance (Mr Muldoon) said today.

The Minister was speaking in Masterton to the annual conference of the agricultural committee of the Contractors’ Federation. “If the tax cannot be passed on, then the impact will be greater, and that is al) to the good, he said. “For this reason, it is unlikely that the complaints that are now coming forward from some employers and groups—that they are finding it impossible to pass the tax on—will result in any moves by the Government to assist them."

Mr Muldoon said the payroll tax had already had the .effect of making employers look at their use of labour and the size of their wage bill “In certain publicised instances, it has stiffened resistance to wage demands and, of course, this year it will draw some $2O million out in revenue as part of the over-all deflationary effect of the Budget." The Minister said his Budget was designed to keep

es in the best possible statej of economic health until we knew a bit more about the conditions of Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community. Negotiatins for British entry, he said, were “the most important matter requiring the attention of the Government in the months to come.”