EFFECT ON BUSINESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 104, 4 May 1937, Page 12

EFFECT ON BUSINESS

"SOMEWHAT OF A SHOCK"

The suggestion that a review- of the incidence of taxation would be helpful and that such a move would receive full support from the business community was expressed by Mr. C. J. B. Norwood, when he was asked for his views, in- his capacity of president of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, on the increase in rates necessitated by the city estimates for the current year. "The increase in the city estimates for the current year, although not wholly unexpected, represents somewhat of a shock to the business community," said Mr. Norwood. "It would, of course, be idle to suppose that the new conditions we have to meet in our system generally can be absorbed without considerable increased cost.

"This rise represents an increase in the cost of city management and control since 1930 of just under £90,000 per anpum, and it approaches very close to £1 per head for every individual, man, woman, and child, while the total for city services has now reached the large figure of £5.07 per head of the city population. To the business man, of course, it amounts to an aggregation of general taxation that affects big and small businesses alike. Rates and the graduated land tax have become a very serious matter indeed in the accounts of our business fraternity. The law must be obeyed and the cost whatever the conditions may be, has got to be found by a very limited .population so far as New Zealand is concerned. "I believe that a complete review of 'the incidence of taxation would be helpful, and doubtless the business community would take their full part in assisting the Government m this "regard." ____________