Budget July 28

Press, 12 July 1983, Page 1

Budget July 28

PA Wellington The Government has still not decided whether to include taxation of property trusts in the July 28 Budget, said the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, yesterday. Releasing the date he will read the document to Parliament, Mr Muldoon said that all the Budget decisions had been finalised, apart from the question of property trusts. “I’d like to put something in the Budget as to what we do about them,” Mr Muldoon said. “It is a matter really of deciding what we

are going to do. We are having discussions with all the interested parties.” Last month Mr Muldoon warned that he was looking at the taxation of group investment property funds. He questioned whether listed property funds should continue to have the tax advantages of traditional trusts. Mr Muldoon has also foreshadowed 1983 Budget tax changes aimed at giving lower-paid, single-income earning families relief from the wage freeze.

In Auckland, the Labour Party announced plans to beat the Budget gun by about a week.

Mr Roger Douglas, Labour’s finance spokesman, said yesterday that he was preparing an alternative “statement on the economy” and he planned to release it probably a week before Mr Muldoon’s Budget.

Mr Douglas said he was not preparing a “fully blown alternative budget” but a “commentary on the whole of the New Zealand economy, where we should be going and what’s happening. It will be much the same as what I have done in other years.” Mr Douglas said he had already done a “fair bit of work” towards his “statement on the economy,” but rather than developing policies, was working on objec-

tives and priorities for 1984. As to what he was expecting in Mr Muldoon’s Budget, he said: “I don’t think he’ll do very much. There will be some small adjustment to those on lower incomes in terms of tax to make up for the loss suffered on disposable income.”

“I think he will be trying to talk the economy up again. He will try to point to the fact that inflation is down and say that that is a good thing. He will say the balance of payments is improving and therefore he can give some goodies away some time next year.” The Muldoon Budget would be more a promise of things to come, he said.

Government members of Parliament will be in for a hectic two days in July, with the Budget presentation followed the next day by the start of the National Party’s annual conference, in Dunedin.

Parliament sat late into the night after Mr Muldoon read last year’s Budget.

He said yesterday that he was not sure on which day this month Parliament would resume its 1983 sitting.