A NEW SINGLE TAX

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 198, 19 May 1936, Page 11

A NEW SINGLE TAX

Raising of Revenue From Income Only PLAN TO DRIVE HOME COST OF GOVERNMENT The raising of .State revenues from one source only, a direct tax on incomes, large and small, is suggested by Mr. W. B. Matheson, of Seatoun, Wellington, as a means of bringing home to all citizens the cost of government, and thus saving democracy from destruction through its own extravagances. The suggestion was elaborated in an interview yesterday, following Mr. Mathieson’s interest in the leading article in Saturday’s “Dominion.” “I trust your long leading article on Modern Government means that you are prepared to review the unsatisfactory condition of our community machine, and I speak plainly about the duties attaching to the privileges of citizenship,’’ said Mr. Matheson, who has been for many years a senior officer of the Farmers’ Union, and who has always stood fast by the union’s motto, "Principles, not. Party.” “Your admirable and provocative leader reminds us of the absurd position we are in, where the thoughtless majority pay millions a year in taxation when they do shopping without realising it is equal to a tax of about a quarter of their wages ami incomes. "You end on a full note by suggesting that wisdom can only be expected to develop among us by carefully improving our educational system, and waiting for a new generation to apply the result of its learning. I submit that the remedy is in our hands to-day if the majority will give as! much thought to the • art of government as they do to our national sports. The Single Tax on Land. “In your same issue Mr. P. J. O’Regan again offers Henry George’s single tax on land as a simple way out of our difficulties. I put that aside as an undemocratic measure, in that it asks the landholders of New Zealand (a minority) to pay the whole of our national taxation, at the bidding of the people of the electorate, the large majority of whom are not landholders. A single tax on incomes, which to Mr. O’Regan is anathema, appears to me equitable and educational in a high degree. “When unemployment lay like a thunder-cloud over our community, we faced the position bravely and simply by contributing according to our ability, to raise £4,000,000 for our unfortunate fellows. That wag more than a generous gesture. It faced a need and filled it, but it did much more: it taught the rank and file of us that a Government can’t spend £4,000,000 without collecting 1 it somewhere. It showed us that, the £20,000,000 needed for annual State expenditure was about 5/- in the £ on our national income. At present we pay about a quarter of it by a direct tax on the incomes of a minority of voters; and most of the rest we pay indirectly when we go shopping. Tho total is equal to 5/- in the £on all our incomes. If we were listed to pay it each week, or as often as our incomes came to us, we should be shocked and angry. But we do pay an equivalent unknowingly, because we have been lulled to sleep by our revenue collectors and politicians, who are frightened to tell us the simple truth. An Aid to Goodwill. “To move steadily toward such a means of taxation is equitable and educative, and a promoter of real goodwill. Equitable because it asks each voter to contribute toward the cost of our community life in proportion to his income; educative because it brings home to all a realisation that they arc shareholders in New Zealand Unlimited; productive of goodwill because it puts employers and servants, in commerce and State Affairs, on an even basis, and a logical sympathy would develop between the fortunate and the unfortunate, in . that diminishing incomes in one group, would demand larger contributions from the more fortunate. It would develop our sense of responsibility as citizens, and the quarterly return of our Government Statistician, showing departmental expenses, would become more Interesting to your readers than returns from race meetings and lotteries, because it would inform us what income remained to us to satisfy our personal wants'. “Under such a system, it would be interesting to learn the annual grants needed to protect our secondary industries as tariffs were gradually reduced •to vanishing point. "I don’t know where to find a leader with courage and personality enough to lead us to reform in this way. But I do know that after 50 years of interest In New Zealand public affairs I am convinced that it offers the most reasonable move toward stable government, and that we eannot expect democracy to survive without some such commonsense facing of facts.”