BRITAIN’S BUDGET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 121, 23 April 1936, Page 2

BRITAIN’S BUDGET

MEETING THE REQUIREMENTS. CHANCELLOR EXPLAINS. (United Press Association-—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (British Official Wireless.) Received April 22, 2.5 p.m. RUGBY, April 21. Mr Neville Chamberlain, in his Budget speech, put down £89,000,000 jis the yield from death duties and £27,000,000 from stamp duties, making with the other items a total for inland revenue of £342,000,000. With the Post Office contribution of £lO,750,000, the total estimated revenue on the existing basis of taxation would be £776,606,000, leaving him with a deficit of £21,291,000. The Chancellor then proceeded to explain the proposals for balancing the Budget. Erom the measures to be incorporated in the Finance Act for dealing with ingenious methods of tax evasion, which he described. He expected to get several millions. However, he proposed to carry a little further the relief he had given last year to taxpayers with small incomes and the burden of a family. He was increasing the allowance for children from £SO to £6O per child at a cost of a million this year and two million in the full year, and lie was raising, at a similar sacrifice of revenue, the general allowance for married persons from £l7O to £IBC per annum for the future, personalty abroad to be treated in the same way as personalty at home.

The Chancellor condemned the existing system of feeding tho Road Fund out of the varying produce of duties specifically assigned to it as irregular, and while disclaiming any intention to curtail road development said it should be replaced by the more normal method of allowing Parliament to assess the needs of the fund and satisfy them by votes out of rev< nue as a whole.

Reviewing the growth'of national prosperity since he had opened his first Budget in 1932, the Chancellor, at the close of his speech, claimed that an indispensable foundation had been the policy of which the two main pillars were the tariff and cheap money. The tariff had converted the adverse balance of trade of £104,000,000 yearly into a favourable balance of £37,000,000 and was making a valuable contribution to revenue. The benefits of cheap money were being progressively reaped, as was shown by the building boom, the growth in exports, and the activity in the retail trade.