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Taxation

Sir,—The theme of your leader (April 10} was the need for “simplicity” in tax collection. A turnover tax seems radical; it is in fact the simplest change. Under income tax there are already terrible complexities in the “profit and loss accounting” required. Tax Department investigations are therefore also complicated. T.O.T. would use the existing simple sales tax-type system (sales tax is an expensive type of turnover tax), and a continuation of the P.A.Y.E. wages-tax system, under which the rate of tax would be massively reduced. Value added tax (V.A.T.) requires two sets of bookkeeping,, and is known to be easily evaded by “chains of evaders” in the same supply line. V.A.T. would not abolish income tax, so there would then be two complex systems of tax collection operating simultaneously. Nobody wants that. So, for “simplicity,” a T.O.T. which replaces income tax is the answer.—Yours, etc., B. M. GRIERSON.

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/CHP19810430.2.79.4

Bibliographic details

Press, 30 April 1981, Page 16

Word Count
149

Taxation Press, 30 April 1981, Page 16

Taxation Press, 30 April 1981, Page 16