$91M tax collected

Press, 12 August 1980, Page 23

$91M tax collected

Lion Breweries is having to pay “inordinate” sums to the Government, the chairman (Sir Ralph Thompson) says in the annual report. Last year the company was compelled to pay the Government, in various types of taxation $90,996,000 or 41 per cent more than last year. The company also had to pay the country’s biggest individual income tax bill included in this, grand total, of $9,620,000 compared with $9,268,600 in the 1979 year. However, Sir Ralph says that sales taxes, with the 30 per cent introduced in the 1979 Budget, represents _ a very substantial part of this total tax increase. “To demonstrate the unfairness of the treatment the

Government metes out .to the brewing industry,” Sir Ralph provides a table showing that in 1923 per litre duty and sales tax on beer was only one cent.

By 1930 it had risen to two cents, in 1940 it had risen to five cents, it stood at nine cents ih 1950, 17c in i 960, in 1980 it was 30c, and the present rate, according to the latest Budget was 34c. Also writing in the annual report, the managing director, Mr John Macfarlane reports that because of this huge impact on the price of beer, continued emigration of the young and drinkdrive blitzes, there had been a reduction of nine per cent in the volume of beer sold by the group.