FAMILY BURDENS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 10

FAMILY BURDENS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —In presenting his Budget proposals Mr. Nash assures us that the sacrifices asked for are to be spread evenly over the community. With this comforting statement the family man on a small wage or salary, will disagree. He is faced not only with a 5 per cent, reduction in income, but with a rising flood of prices, accentuated by the 100 per cent, increase in sales tax. Every rise in living costs hits the family with a severity multiplied by the number of dspendants. We are, in effect, asking the child to pay a substantial share of the war expenses, while those without dependants and those on' comfortable incomes escape comparatively lightly. By an adroit rearrangement of the income tax schedule it now appears to the unthinking that the tax on earned income reaches 12s in the £ at £4000, whereas the rate at this income level amounts to 7s lid per £ of taxable balance, compared with 5s 2d previously (as the 15 per cent, surtax applies both cases, it does not affect the comparison). Similarly over the whole range of taxable incomes, from £500 upwards, the increase in direct tax has been far too small, in view of the urgency of the situation. It would almost seem as if the proposals had been designed to spare this class as much as possible. In England the standard rate is 7s 6d in the £, with supertax rising to 17s, while the British Government is spending a million a week in food subsidies. New Zealand still has a long way to go before equality of sacrifice is a reality. At present the major.part of the sacrifice is on those least able to bear it—the wives and children of the men. in the lowest income groups.—I "am, etc.,

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