TAXATION BURDEN

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 266, 6 August 1931, Page 11

TAXATION BURDEN

Australia’s Condition BUSINESS LANGUISHES High Tariff Barriers Comments on the present situation in Australia were made by Mr. J. K. Carruthers, representative in Sydney of D. J. McCallum, Ltd., Edinburgh, whisky distillers, who arrived in Wellington this week on a business visit. “With the additional taxation in the Commonwealth, and especially in New South Wales, business is being generally taxed out of existence,” Mr. Carruthers told a “Dominion” reporter. “There is no disputing that. To that have to be added the difficulties caused by the present financial chaos and the fact that all importing is greatly restricted by imports Acts.” In addition, he continued, merchants found that they were not even able to pay for the limited quantities of imports that they were bringing in from overseas on account of the rate of exchange. This state of affairs was having a very serious effect on all businesses and was the cause of the large amount of unemployment to be seen in the capital cities of all States. Conditions in New South Wales. New South Wales was undoubtedly in a very bad. way, Mr. Carruthers said, and was considerably worse off than any of the other States, but he thought perhaps that newspaper reports had rather exaggerated the situation. People there were certainly doing their best to right the wrongs, but he could see absolutely no remedy until the present Government went out of office. When Australia found her feet again, there was no doubt that she would go ahead with the greatest of speed; in fact, she would go so fast that people would hardly realise what was taking place. It was patent that the Labour regime bad been an utter failure, and to some extent events in the recent past showed that it was time to haul down the old flag cf democracy. • Mr. Carruthers considered that for the present at least the Government of the country should be vested in a number of business commissioners whose sole interest would be to bring about tne return of prosperity to the whole of Australia. i Crippling Tariffs. Mr. Carruthers confessed himself as being a free trader, and attributed much of the present depression in Australia to the crippling tariffs on all sides. He was convinced that in most instances Customs ■taxation had quite reached saturation point, and that any further increment would mean that the sale of the commodity would so increase that the revenue from the increased duty would be less than before. Many countries, the United States being a specific instance, had found that tariff walls simply meant their own crucifixion. In other words: “Before we sell, we have to buy; if our customers are not wealthy, we cannot be wealthy.” America for years had adopted the policy of selling all she had to other nations, but buying nothing. Recent events showed that she could no longer afford to do that. Selling could only be maintained if there was in turn buying.