GIFT COUPONS

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 142, 18 June 1931, Page 10

GIFT COUPONS

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—After reading in your paper letters by "Fair Deal" and "Onlooker" I would like to express my opinion on the unfairness o£ coupon trading. As a manufacturer of twenty years in business in Wellington, I have never experienced such a bad period as exists at present, and in my opinion the position would never have been so bad in my business if it had not been for this unfair trading, which does no good to the business people or to the community in general excepting the tobacco companies. The Prime Minister has been stressing the shortage of money coming into the country, and has been making cuts, in expenditure and increasing the postagefees/ taxes, etc. Has he been, not far seeing enough to grasp the fact that if the tobacco companies can afford to give away thousands of pounds in- the course of a year in gifts and still pay high dividends to their shareholders, then the amount of money spent on gifts is excess profit, and the duty on tobacco could bo easily doubled and still be sold at the same price to the consumer's, the Government reaping the benefit of the extra duty by having the money still kept in New Zealand. Why docs the Government not elenr the matter up, and give the other traders a ehanee to keep their businesses together?—l am, etc., . H.H.M.