ITALY’S ARMS PROGRAMME

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 74, 21 December 1937, Page 18

ITALY’S ARMS PROGRAMME

Ten Eer Cent. Capital Levy BALANCED BUDGET BY 1940 It Is expected that the Italian Treasury will secure £67,500,000 for armaments from the 10 per cent, capital levy and increased taxes on commercial undertakings announced - by the Cabinet recently. The levy is relied on to produce £OB,000,000, and the tax increases £9,500,000, says the Rome correspondent of the London “Daily Telegraph.” The Government hopes that these sums will be paid into the Treasury by June 10, 1940.. If so, the Budget will be balanced up to that date. The deficit at present is estimated at about £29,000,000. Jt is pointed out, however, that the 5 per cent, levy on real estate, which was imposed last October . when the lira was devalued, produced only about half the sum expected. It yielded about £65,000,000. Shares Decline. The decision to follow the estate levy with one twice as heavy on the capital and reserves of all joint stock companies was taken at a Cabinet meeting which lasted two hours and a half. Signor Mussolini presided. As the immediate consequence of the new burden on industry the decline in the prices of industrial shares has been accentuated. Stockholders in the secret of the coming levy threw large packets of their shares on the markets. The levy is to he paid between March, 1938, and June, 1940, in 15 instalments. There are certain exemptions. Banks and institutions with slight assessable assets and co-operative societies with capital under £2OO are exempted. Those companies whose stock is quoted on the Italian bourses may pay half of the levy by handing scrip to that amount to the Treasury, provided that the total subscribed capital of the company is not less than £9400. Companies which have already subscribed to the capital levy on real estate will be allowed to deduct that amount from the total of their share of the new one. Companies holding State bonds to the extent of at least 10 per cent, of their total capital will be assessed at a lower rate than others. Equal facilities will be given to companies in possession of holdings belonging to other companies. A reduction of 50 per cent, will be allowed for those companies which have made no profits during the past year. Those which have made no profit for three consecutive years will be permitted a 75 per cent, exemption. To attract foreign capital to the country, foreign investors will, in certain circumstances, be exempt from death duties for 20 years, and from sequestration or appropriation of their estates without indemnity even in wartime. Taxes on commercial transactions have been slightly increased.

The shortage of certain commodities is reflected in the temporary revival of import licences for the following:— Copper, knitted clothes, paper, bottles, cotton textiles, artificial silk fibres, preserved eggs. Other decrees provide for the establishment of a separate branch of the National Fascist Militia for East Africa, the institution of boards for organising land settlement in Abyssinia, the establishment of three new communes in Italy, and a charter for the Fascist. Union of Large Families. By another decree, April 25, the blrtiiday of the late Marchese Marconi, is added to the long list of naHonal