COMPULSORY LOAN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 257, 27 September 1940, Page 2

COMPULSORY LOAN

RESERVE BANK'S FUNCTION

CHECK;ON SUBSCRIPTIONS

Per Press Association

WELLINGTON, Sept. 27.

Regulations amending the Finance -Emergency Regulations. 1940, issued in June, were published in to-night’s Gazette One of the new regulations deals with fixed deposits payable in foreign currency and requires the owner of every such fixed deposit to furnish to the Minister of Finance, 1 or as ho directs, information and particulars thereof by October 15, 1940, or within 14 days after the date on which he becomes the owner of a fixed deposit (whichever date is later). The Minister of Finance (Hon. W. Nash) explained this evening that lie had delegated his powers under this regulation to the Reserve Bank of Now Zealand. The returns should accordingly be made to the Reserve Bank. The regulation was complementary to the existing regulations requiring 'holders of foreign securities and foreign currency to make returns of such foreign securities and currency to the Reserve Bank.

Another of the new regulations amends the clause in the principal regulations which states that if the Minister of Finance has reason to believe that any person has not subscribed in due proportion to his means to any war purposes loan, the Minister, by notice to such person, may require him to subscribe for any specified amount to such war purposes loan. The new amending regulation states that notice may be given by publication in the Gazette to any specified person or to two or more specified persons, or to all persons of a specified class (such Gazette notice being a notice to and binding on all persons affected bv it), and such notice may indicate the amount or the respective amounts required by the notice to bo subscribed. CHECK BY BANK.

"Where in any such notice the amounts are indicated by reference to a person’s income or income-tax, the Reserve Bank, which acts as the Government’s agent in issuing the prospectus of any Government loans and receives applications for subscribers thereto, will furnish the Commissioner of Taxes with the statements of Tiersons who have subscribed. The Tax Department will then check such statements with the amount of income or of income tax payable by such person and indicate to the Minister to what extent any such person has failed to comply with the terms of the notice in the Gazette. Any certificate given by the Commissioner of Taxes as to the amount which any person is required pursuant to the basis set out in such Gazette notice to subscribe is to be conclusive evidence of such person’s compulsory liability to subscribe for such a war loan.

Another of the amending regulations is designed to remove the difficulty confronting trustees of savings banks who may wish to contribute to the war loans. Under the proviso of section 33 of the Savings Banks Act, 190 S, a savings bank is prohibited from investing more than 90 per cent, of its total funds. During the last war this limitation was removed in so far as investments in war loans were concerned, and the same course is now to he followed. The other amendments are purely machinery amendments of the existing regulations.