TAX ON KNOWLEDGE

Evening Star, Issue 25745, 19 March 1946, Page 7

TAX ON KNOWLEDGE

DOMINION'S IMPOSITION ON BOOKS BRITISH PUBLISHER'S COMMENT (P.A.) WELLINGTON, March 18. New Zealand to-day is, in effect, putting a quota and a tax on knowledge. That opinion was expressed to-day by Mr Walter G. Harrap, director of the publishing firm of George G. Harrap Ltd., and past president of the Publishers’ Association of Great Britain. New Zealand, which formerly had the greatest book-buying public of any country in the British Empire, was now the only: country in the Empire which imposed any quota or tax on books imported from any part of the sterling area, Mr Harrap said. Discussing the result, he added: “If a bookseller is working on a limited quota he must think first about his commercial .good health and secondly about the. quality of the hooks he handles.’ He will buy first the books that will sell quickly and not remain on his shelves. Books that help to educate people are usually slow selling. They are the ones likely to be shut out of New Zealand. Catchpenny best-sellers are the ones on which the greater part of the quota will be expended.” The New Zealand Government might well consider whether the amount of revenue it received from the 3 per cent, primage on books was worth the stigma attaching to the only country in the Empire to countenance such a fax. When Britain sold all her securities in order to continue the war she still exempted books from the purchase tax which was imposed on all articles except those essential to the life of the people. It was recognised that hodks were something more than mere merchandise. At present, said Mr Harrap, the demand for books was far greater than could be met by the manufacturing potentialities of the trade in the Eng-lish-speaking world. He considered that within 12 to 18 months the British trade would.be able to give full supplies of the limited number of titles in production. It would be at least five years, however, before the publio would be able to get all the titles it wanted.