New tax threat to industry, say booksellers

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 12

New tax threat to industry, say booksellers

PA Wellington The future of imported books and those published in New Zealand was threatened by the Government’s proposed goods and services tax, according to the Booksellers’ Association.

The association’s director, Ms Kate Fortune, said the tax would jeopardise the book trade. “There are a number of very worthy publications that should see the light of day and they will simply expire because the product becomes too costly,” Ms Fortune said.

Specialist publications, poetry, literary journals and topical books published in New Zealand would not survive the proposed tax, she said.

The Government announced its intention to bring in the tax in its November Budget and a White Paper will be produced as a talus for submissions from interested parties.

The association, which represents New Zealand’s 550 leading booksellers, plans to rally public support to have books zero-rated or exempted from tax. The Minister of Finance, Mr Douglas, said the association’s case was based on a. series of misunderstandings.

Some booksellers asserted that the goods and services tax would reduce sales and put them out of business and that many academic books would no longer be published as prices went up, he said.

“What those claims forget is that the money from G.S.T. will be used to finance substantial cuts in income tax and an improvement in the benefits system,” he said.

G.S.T. was not being introduced to extract more money from the public. The Government was bringing in one new tax while substantially reducing another, and leaving more money in people’s pay-packets. "G.S.T. will not disadvantage books compared with other products, since the tax will apply equally to all products, and income tax reductions will also be wideranging,” Mr Douglas said. Some booksellers in Christchurch had claimed G.S.T. would add $lO,OOO a year to their accounting costs because they would now have to account for the tax on a book-by-book basis. “That claim is outlandish, as they will find when they read the White Paper to be presented to Parliament on Tuesday, describing the administration of G.5.T.,” said Mr Dcgglas. U