INCREASED TAXATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14144, 20 August 1909, Page 6

INCREASED TAXATION.

DR. FINDLAY'S EXPLANATION. Iw answer to Mr. Massey's criticisms of Dr. Findlay's Timaru speech, the Attor-ney-General informed an interviewer at Wellington in effect that he had been misrepresented by Mr. Massey in regard to what he had said concerning the Government and taxation. What he had said at Timaru was that the taxation upon the great mass of our people had been reduced by the present Government by an amount equal to from 25 per cent, to 30 per cent., while more was now paid in direct taxation by some 41,000 people—not because the rate had been increased, but because their wealth or income had greatly increased. This Mr. Massey unequivocally denied, and fell back for proof upon a sum in simple division found in the Year Book, where the total taxation from all sources, direct and indirect, is divided by our total population (man, woman and child), and thus an increased per capita quotient is shown. In regard to death duties, Mr. Massey had represented him as having said : " There seems no reason why, after a certain degree of remoteness of kinship, the claim of the State should not prevail over that of absentees relatives." What lie did say was that in 15 years £51,000,000 of wealth in deceased estates had passed to hands that had not earned it, while all the State got the State that had helped to create much of that wealth was £3 16s per cent. He had showed that many of our landed estates escaped duty altogether, and then declared that when a man died in New Zealand without making any will, and died without leaving anyone in New Zealand related to him (no matter how remotely), it was unfair that that wealth should pass out of New Zealand. Mr. Massey had assured his interviewer that all the speaker had said indicated that the Government intended to increase taxation. As regards death duties, he certainly thought that they should be increased. The intention of the Government to increase these duties was stated by the Prime Minister some months ago. As regards other taxation, he had nowhere suggested that it should bo increased."