TAXATION BURDEN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 46, 23 August 1939, Page 18

TAXATION BURDEN

PERCENTAGE BASIS

LOWER THAN BEFORE

"Inflation is always on the lips of j the Opposition, but members of the National Party do not object to a little inflation themselves when it suits their own interests." said Mr. J, Thorn (Government, Thames). He added that if members of the Opposition agreed with the statement in the Reserve Bank report that the granting of further ac commodation to the Dairy Account would tend towards inflation, they could not logically argue for an increase in the guaranteed price. The Leader of the Opposition (the I Hon. Adam Hamilton): What an argument. t Mr. J. Barclay (Government, Mars|den): You've got them. j Mr. Thorn: If they talk of an increased price, it is only to pander to interests that they think will support them. I Adding that members of the Opposition made a habit of accusing the Government of wasteful expenditure on Public Works, Mr. Thorn said they could not ask the Minister concerned to increase activity in their respective electorates and then turn round and charge the Government with extravagance for having consented to these requests. Boiled down their requests meant "more for me and less for every body else," a policy that was consistent with the Opposition's idea of "good old rugged individualism." "STRANGE ARGUMENTS." Strange arguments were heaid from j the Opposition, added Mr. Thorn. Its members delighted in telling the couti try that the Government had failed to solve the unemployment problem. They were quite ready to believe thai if money was spent on the manufacture of bullets, guns, and othei armaments men had been found work, but if public money was used to employ men in the development of the nation's facilities and resources the Opposition considered the number of these men to be symbolical of the spread of unemployment. Their wrong-headedness was overpowering. "All the figures prove that after paying all the taxation imposed by this Government the taxpayers re substantially better oft than before this Government came into office," said Mr. Thorn. "More than that, the figures show that in relation to the aggregate private income the total of all forms of taxation now is less than in any one of the three crisis years between 1932 and 1935." Analysing the figures of aggregate private income and total taxation, Mr. Thorn said that in 1932-33 the proportion of taxation to income was 21.7 per cent., in 1933-34 21.2 per cent., in 1934-35 23.7 per cent., and in 1936-37 (the first year of the Labour regime) 20.5 per cent., no alteration in the taxes having come into effect. In 1936-37 the Government, in order to improve the civil and soldier pensions system, increased the income tax rates so as to yield an additional £1,000,000 a year and reimposed the graduated land tax to raise another £800,000. The additional taxation collected the following year was actually £5,600.000, not £1,800,000, more than in the previous year, be-j cause of the rise in the aggregate private income from £151,800,000 to £167,000,000. PERCENTAGE OF TAXATION. "If you pay £5,500,000 of additional j taxation and have an additional £15,500,000 to pay it from, you are actually £10,000,000 richer than before the additional taxation was imposed," said Mr. Thorn. "Surely it is no hardship if, after paying the increased taxation, the taxpayer is better off than he was before. Moreover, in 1938-39 the aggregate private income was £180,000.000 and the total taxation £37,767,000. the proportion of taxation j being 21 per cent." He was confident that the proposed increases in taxation this year would not materially alter the percentage, so that it was totally misleading to assert that the people were loaded with a burden they could not bear and were being bled white by taxation. The same conclusion could be drawn from the statistics of income taxation. From that point of view the taxpayers of New Zealand had very little to complain of.