GRADING AND TAXATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16035, 29 September 1915, Page 6

GRADING AND TAXATION.

While the Government is searching for modes of increasing the revenue without unduly harassing the community, it should consider the

recovery by a small grading charge of the public expenditure upon dairies, including grading cost. As it appears in the public accounts

grading itself is assumed to cost only a few hundred pounds per annum, but this phase of the work of the Dairy Produce Division evidently

cannot be isolated, and in any case it is only reasonable that in war-

time and under all the circumstances the highly profitable dairying industry should not be a charge upon the

general taxpayer. The Division, without any loading for its share in departmental cost, expends between £16,000 and £17,000 annually. A grading charge of one shilling per hundredweight upon the butter annually exported from the Dominion would recoup the Government in the sum of approximately £20,000, while about £15,000 would be obtained by a charge of sixpence per hundredweight upon cheese ex-.

ported. This charge of less than one-ninth of a penny per pound on butter and less than one-eighteenth of a penny per pound on cheese could not be considered in any way

oppressive. Not until the end of the 1916-17 season would this grading charge recompense the Government for the actual cost of the Dairy Produce Division of the Agricultural Department since the war commenced. Incidentally, such a grading charge would give some slight relief to the public of the Dominion, which now not only supports the Dairy Produce Division but pays for its butter at a price calculated on export values, f.0.b., plus cost of " pounding" and distribution. When grading was introduced in 1894, as a means of assisting the industry, dairying was in a very different position to that which it occupies to-day. In 1894, the value of dairy produce exported was

CQnsiderably under £400,000; now it is about £4,000,000. Prices are phenomenal and assured ; the prospects for the season were never better. There could not be a better opportunity of increasing the revenue to an appreciable extent by the simple and equitable process of charging dairy exports, increased in value by the war, with the departmental cost actually incurred during the war on behalf of the industry which has been so wisely and so effectively fostered to maturity.