IDEALS BUT NO ACTION

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 58, 6 September 1945, Page 6

IDEALS BUT NO ACTION

While the New Zealand Government has not yet got beyond the stage of promising, at some unspecified date, an overhaul of taxation, the Commonwealth Government has decided, according to a Canberra message, to make an all-round income-tax reduction of 12£ per cent. In addition, it proposes to make a reduction in sales tax, and it is also suggested that there will be a proportionate reduction in company taxation. In other words, the Australian Government has decided to put into practice as soon as possible the principles to which Mr. Nash has given free expression, but on which he has so far not seen fit to act. The point that will interest taxpayers is that if a Labour Government in Australia, whose post-war commitments are certainly no less than New Zealand's, can grant substantial relief from the tremendous burden of war taxation, why cannot a Labour Government in New Zealand do the same? The reasons which have actuated the Australian Government apply with equal force in this country. If post-war recovery is to be speeded up • and is to proceed on sound lines, it is clear that private industry will have to accept a large share of the responsibility of providing productive employment for all who seek it. but under present conditions it is being hampered in its planning by taxation which deprives it of the financial resources necessary to meet the demands of the future and by uncertainty about the Government's intentions. While Mr. Nash gives expression to ideals with which no fault can be found, he does nothing that holds out any immediate hope that it will be possible to put those ideals into practice. It is little wonder that industry and the public genei-ally are becoming impatient, and even suspicious. The Australian Government has recognised the important bearing that taxation, including the iniquitous sales tax, has on the economic stability of the country and upon the country's capacity to absorb the thousands of men and women who are to be released from the forces and from war jobs. New Zealand is also faced with the necessity of providing productive peacetime employment for thousands of men and women, but so far there has been little- sign that the bearing which excessive taxation of all kinds has on the problem is recognised. If it is recognised, certainly nothing is'being done about it. New Zealand's need today is less theory and more practice.