High Tax Rates offer Problem to Englsh Industry

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 181, 3 August 1938, Page 13

High Tax Rates offer Problem to Englsh Industry

MANCHESTER Mounting local Government expenditure is causing grave concern in North of England industrial areas.

Despite severe pruning, a large number of county, municipal and urban authorities have had to raise their taxes during recent months in order that budgets might bo balanced. Increases have ranged from a few coppers to two shillings in the pound, and even more perturbing is the admission in some cases that rates will soar still further unless Government action eases the burden of hard-hit communit-

Rates arc highest where depression is most acute, due iu no small measure to crushing poor low rolief expenditure. Hard-hit communities are urging that the cost of maintaining those who are not eligible for unemployment relief and who are destitute should be spread over the whole of the country; that it should become a national rather than a local liability.

Although quite a number of local authorities have privately discussed this subject with their Parliamentary representatives, Westminster appears to be in no great hurry to adopt such a course. What is probably feared is an outer 3 from the prosperous districts which would no doubt complain that if they had to help to meet the overwhelming public assistance expenditure of others their own prosperity would suffer a setback.

On the other hand, the complaint is made that industrialists not unnaturally fight shy of establishing new factories in towns where abnormal rates prevail. Similarly old established industries display an anxiety to expand elsewhere where overhead charges are not so

Even the attraction of jobs in prosperous counties is not solving the problem of these depressed areas. During the past six years nearly 42,000 persons have been transferred from Durham to counties in the South.

“These are the best of our people, who are received with open arms by industrialists,” Mr W. J. Stowart* M.P. for Houghton-le-Spring, Durham, recently pointed out. “We are left with middle-aged, old, and infirm people who are going to be a permanent charge on the rate-payers.”

I At the present time there are 10,000 old-age pensioners in Durham charge-

.ablo to the rates, costing rather more than £4,000 per week, equal to a rate of Is 6d iu the pound.