Duties Bill grossly unfair, says Labour

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32406, 19 September 1970, Page 3

Duties Bill grossly unfair, says Labour

(N.Z. Press Association) i WELLINGTON, Sept. 18. ' Legislation reducing top rates of estate and gift duty was described in Parliament today | as discriminatory and grossly unfair by the Labour Party spokesman on social welfare (Mr N. J. King, Birkenhead). Mr King, speaking during the committee stages debate on the Estate and Gift Duties: Amendment Bill, said the measure gave special concessions to a wealthy few, thus displaying the Government’s class policy. A total of 200 New Zealand estates would get tax concessions of s2m under the bill, he said. “Why can’t this money be redistributed to beneficiaries,” he asked. The Minister in Charge of War Pensions and Rehabilitation (Mr Thomson) called Mr King!* charges political humbug and said the Labour Party’s attitude to the bill

■showed sham concern for | beneficiaries. Above all things, he said, ! the bill displayed the National Party’s concern for families in New Zealand. The Labour Party’s record, as far -as beneficiaries were conicemed, was shocking. ' The bill under discussion jreduces the rates of duty on (estates valued at more than $14,000. The top rate of duty, charged on part of the value of estates worth more than $150,000, is reduced from 59 to 40 per cent. Personal effects worth up to $2OOO will be exempt from duty. The Associate Minister of Finance (Mr Pickering) said only a little more than 0.6 per cent of estates in a survey sample would have any duty payable on personal effects after the $2OOO allowance in the bill.

Mr M. A. Connelly (Lab., Wigram) said the bill was (just another example of the onesidedness of the Governiment’s policy of redistributing wealth in favour of the ■very rich. I lite debate was interirupted by the 4 p.m. adjournment of the House.