Increased Taxation

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 265, 5 August 1937, Page 13

Increased Taxation

Sir.—After having lived in New Zealand for 50 years I am now beginning to wonder, as indeed are many others, if this is really “God’s own country.” Since leaving the Mother Country 50 years ago, I have met the taxation each year without complaint, until the last few years, during which time every form of taxation has advanced until the income tax alone is now approximately £2O per capituin per annum. I do not see how right-thinking people can look upon such a state of affairs as anything short of a positive disgrace to a British country, and a young and prosperous country, too. To make this feature worse, every product is selling at peak prices, yet all our unemployed and sustenance cases are with us in record numbers and can only be counted in thousands. Inevitably a slump or at least a fall-back in our primary prices .must eventuate sooner or later, and one shudders to think of the consequences. Nowadays one cannot pick up a paper anywhere in the Dominion without reading complaints of tlie severity of taxation in New Zealand, coming from every quarter.—l am, etc., APPREHENSIVE THINKER. Remuera, August 2.