DISSENTING TAILORS

Evening Star, Issue 21932, 19 January 1935, Page 12

DISSENTING TAILORS

OPPOSITION TO SALES TAX “ Our refusal to pay the tax as levied on bespoke tailoring is based on several grounds,” said Mr T. Jenkins, secretary of the local Tailoring Committee, in referring to, the recent announcement that many tailor’s throughout the dominion are declining to pay the sales tax_ because of alleged discrimination against them. “Firstly,” said Mr Jenkins, “ th« clause in the Act defining manufacturing tailors cannot apply to bespoke tailors, as their goods are useless to a reseller in the ordinary course of business,” and such transactions as selling through a reseller have never been known. We might mention that tho sales tax is based on the usual practice of every industry. The clause defining method of taxation states that “it -shall be levied upon the prico charged to a reseller.” When goods have no wholesale value, and any value is purely to the individual purchaser,; then the maker is a retailer and cannot be a manufacturing retailer as defined by the Act. To overcome the absence of a wholesale value in our case the Minister gazetted a notice specifying how order tailoring should be taxed,the only trade one can discover to have been so honoured. The question that concerns the public is the ability of a department to tax outside the provisions of an Act and introduce methods of taxation completely foreign to the general working of the Act. The department has refused to state in what manner manufacturing retailers are taxed, emphasising that all are treated equally. We are aware that these firms are taxed in a proper manner, and naturally we expect the same treatment, but are discriminated against and taxed on retail prices. We are taxed on labour, rent, class of business* skill, and reputation through this discrimination.