INCOME TAX

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 126, 21 February 1921, Page 4

INCOME TAX

THE INSTALMENT SCHEfrIK DISAPPROVED

MR. MASSEY’S VIEW The Minister of Finance (Air. Massey), who returned to AVollington yesterday, has had placed before him the suggest tion that payers of income tax should be allowed to make their payments in two equal instalments. The Treasury is demanding that tho income tax shall be paid in one sum at the end of this month, and many business men are urging that owing to the tightness of ■money, the recent flotation of the Soldiers’ Settlement Loan, and'other factors, the demand is imposing hardship. Speaking to a DcjriNlox reporter on tho subject yesterday, Mr. Alassey said that his responsibility os Alinister of Finance would not permit him to make the concession that was being asked. Alany of the taxpayers had already made their payments, and in any case the people who had asked for permission to pay by instalments did not appear to have understood clearly what the effect would be. The Dominion’s financial year would close at the end. of next month, so that the request amounted to a proposal that one instalment of the income tax should stand over into the next financial year. "If this concession were made,” said the Alinister of Finance, "tho Treasury would have to call for a year and a half’s income tax during the coining financial year. If it allowed an instalment to stand over again, then the Government would lose half a year’s income tax, and we cannot afford to do that. The division of the tax is not possible when the money is being collected right at the end of the financial year. If the -money is going to be paid by instalments, then the first instalment must be paid early in the financial year.”