"ONLY ONE BURDEN"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 50, 1 March 1937, Page 6

"ONLY ONE BURDEN"

TAX ON.INCOMES

20 PER CENT. OF WHOLE

The time allowed, taxpayers to pay their income taxes has now all but expired, and the extraordinary increases in their tax. demand notices have brought home to them forcibly that social transformation has to be paid for (says a statement. by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand) But unprecedentedly heavy as income tax': is this year on the individual, this item, is only one of his burdens: ■ ' ' The whole yield from income tax represents less, than 20 per cent, of .the total taxation ' that is being raised this year by the Government. And the individual taxpayer is by no means -paying the'whole! of .this 20 percent.; companies, which rank: as individuals in New Zealand for.tocome tax purnoses, will pay an appreciable share of the £6,000,000 from income taxes Not-only is : there vthe direct, unemployment taxation, but millions are also paid by : . the people in indirect taxation The following table gives the various items of taxation as a percentage of total taxation, and shows how income taxation, oppressive, as it is is less than a fifth of the whole of the huge : sum that is being raised this year by taxes:—

DISTRIBUTION OF TAXATION. 1936-37. Percentage of total. Customs 3?/° Beer duty 2.6 Sales'tax- •••• J-; Film hire tax • • -j \ Gold export duty ...; • •* Highways taxes ............ »•* Stamp and death duties 10.7 Land tax 4.J Income tax • , Miscellaneous ......... _ -i Unemployment tax "__"_. , ■' : : 100.0

With regard to a nation's total tax bill and the hidden taxation burden, an overseas commentator has remarked that "if that tax bill has to be paid all at one time by the taxpayer,by a direct tax, instead of in driblets in indirect taxes, there would be a revolution which would be recorded in history: as a very snappy affair, and one remarkably effective in reducing the cost of government." ' The Prime .Minister stated in Dunedin a few days ago that "before two years had passed there would' be a transformation in New Zealand that even the most optimistic of them had never dreamt of in the days that had gone." But already the Dominion, has been transformed into probably the most highly , taxed . country in. , the world.