"URGENT" BUT DEFERRED

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 59, 7 September 1938, Page 10

"URGENT" BUT DEFERRED

In August of' last year taxation revision was regarded by the Prime Minister as . one of the questions marked down for "urgent attention" by the Government. "The revision of our taxation system must be faced as early as possible," he said. "We are anxious to see that taxation is equitable. The incidence of taxation is not equitable as it is today. Everyone knows that. We have to change it." Any hopes which the Prime Minister's statement may have raised in the minds of a tax-harassed community have been dashed to the ground, however, and the present Parliament will end its life with the taxation problem not only unsolved but accentuated. The revisions in taxation which have been made by the Labour Government during its term of office have done nothing to reduce the burden carried by the community but have, in fact, had the opposite effect. In the first year there were definite and undisguised increases in taxation and last session the removal of certain anomalies in the main had the effect, of spreading the tax-j gatherer's net a. little vtider. Inequitable features of the taxation system which Mr. Savage professes to be so anxious to remove still remain, and the promised general revision belongs to a future which is becoming more and more uncertain. The annual taxing Bill, introduced into the House of Representatives last evening, maintains rates at their existing level, and the Government will thus go to the country with yet another of its promises unfulfilled.

The fact that taxation rates for the current year are to remain at their present level is but cold comfort and even talk of revision during the life of the next Parliament will do nothing to remove the apprehension, that must felt over the policy which is being . t followed by the Government. The Minister of Finance has made it plain that.liie greater part of the cost of social; security will have to be found from! the Consolidated Fund and that can mean nothing but increased taxation, unless, of course, there are to be excursions into the dangerous field of public credit.. Already Mr. Nash has made a start by providing for the impost on companies of the Is in the £ social security charge and there is good ground for the fear that this may be regarded as the forerunner of additional imposts on the general body of taxpayers. There is much that is vague at the moment about social, security finance, but there is" little room for uncertainty about the burden it will impose on the taxpayers of the country. Under such conditions talk of taxation revision holds out very little real hope. One point is clear and that, is that the country cannot stand much more of the kind of "revision which the taxation system has received up to the present. '/■■■''"■■