TAXATION & THE FAMILY

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 41, 16 February 1918, Page 4

TAXATION & THE FAMILY

10 THE EDITOR.

Sir,-r-on_ Monday evening I directed attention, in your columns, to the fact that the question of the family and family-raising, in this Dominion, calls for the serious consideration of our statesmen and legislators. The system of taxation (indirect as well as direct) now in vogue is in the highest degree discreditable to our financial experts. There is not a singls sound or democratic feature about it. The parents of the Dominion, while called upon J*> supply the defenders of our homes, our lives, and our country, are the victims of a grossly unjust system of taxation—indirectly through the necessaries of life; directly, in innumerable instances, through an inequitably adjusted income tax. In my previous letter I referred to the grotesquely inadequate concessions made by the _ Minister of Finance to the raising and home-making taxpayer. The whole thing, is, in fact, a "political" and "economic" farce—and, if not designed _to be a specious system of camouflage, is a reflection dn the intelligence of our experts and "wizards" in finance! Take one more aspect of the shameful non-discrimination in the matter of income tax. No distinction whatever is made for taxation purposes between "unearned" incomes and "earned"—in other words between income derived from property or investments,- and income earned in the shape of salary! The thing is monstrous. Let us take, for illustration, a concrete instance. Take a taxpayer whose income (say £500) is "unearned" (in the economic sense). He» gets £500 a year from property or investments. If he dies his family are better off (!) relatively than before his death, for their income (£soo)—like tha babbling brookgoes on for ever, and-they have not to "keep" him (now that he. has shuffled off his mortal coil and his direct interest in the £500!). Now take the salaried man with £500 a year. If he dies, his family is probably reduced from comparative affluence to the verge of poverty at one fell swoop. Yet, incredible to relate,. New Zealand's great wizards in finance make both those incomes pay precisely the same amount of income tax! It is as a brother-dominie of other days would say: Prodigious ! That 1, any wizard of finance with any vestige of the democratic in his complexional economics, politics, or religion, could suggest such an inequitable non-discrimina-tion is astounding. That our all too tamely acquiescent , legislators—if they realise the nature of the iniquity practised in this connection—should continue to tolerate it, is infinitely more astound-, ing. The very idea that "permanent" income—income derived from accumulated or inherited or unearned wealthshould' not be taxed more heavily than "casual" income—that is wealth earned in the shape of salary—is outrageous. The injustices which the taxpayers of the Dominion endure in this .connection are due',to positive camouflage on the part of 'our financial experts. Unfortunately, many of the victims seem ignorant of tho fact that they are being imposed upon in this matter. The financial experts of the Dominion are fully conscious of the significance of this nondiscrimination ■ between earned and unearned income for taxation purposes; and yet they keep on" perpetuating it in the interests of wealth-accumulation and wealth-accumulators. If such a thing as social justice is to obtain among us at all, pur statesmen must devise means of so commandeering wealth by equitable taxation that it will contribute a'due share to the State for national purposes. It is a positive "scandal, and a reflection on our experts in finance, that "while so many of our people are oh the verge of poverty, certain exploiters of our economic system can pass from bankruptcy to something approaching millionairism in a matter of twenty or so years. Exploitation of our industries alone can account for it; and it is high time the State set itself seriously to put an end, forever, to such iniquitous exploitation on the part of individuals or of combines of individuals. This can be done only by a thorough investigation and drastic reform in our national system of taxation. . * How cruelly our. present system of .direct, and more especially of indirect, taxation bears on family-raising and home-making is staggeringly revealed in the Government, Statistician's lofficial classification of the Second Division; of the Expeditionary Force Reserve. • Hero it is*—a standing testimony to the ineptitude of our statesmen and the incompetency of our wizards vof finance, and all responsible for our inequitable, system of taxation and revenue-raising: Class A (married men without- ■•>' ■' children). 21,907 Class B (married men with one child) ..: 21,907 Class C (married men with two 'children) .;..... v 24,825 Class D (married men with three children ...........a- 17,253 Class E (married men with four children) .' 10,498 Class F (married men with five or more children) 11,320 Total .' ..... 106,134 Think of '■ it> my fellow-citizens! ' Bow your heads in shame, ye taxation experts! Is it not astonishing that in this land of promise, in winch everything that goes by the name of necessaries of life abound, there should be no fewer' than ' 67,053 families (out of a total, in the Dominion, of 106,134 families) with an average of only one child- for each of those 67,053 families? Astonishing, surely! What can it" mean? It, means, first of all, incompetent statemanship. It means that our wizards of finance' are, by_ taxation—more especially by their iniquitous system of interest taxation oh the necessaries of life—on the high road to extinguishing the family and family-raising. That is what it means. The State commandeers the lives of the sons of the family-raisers, and it imposes all sorts of iniquitous imposts and disabilities on the family-rais-ers and home-makers.' How long is such political and economic, camouflage going to last?—l am, etc., ; . HUGH MACKENZIE. P.S.—Subject to your further indulgence, Mr. Editor, I will make suggestions regarding an equitable and rational system of taxation in a day or two. — H.M.