EFFECT OF NEW TARIFF.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19743, 16 September 1927, Page 14

EFFECT OF NEW TARIFF.

DUTY ON FOREIGN FILMS.

COMPLAINT BY EXHIBITORS. UNFAIR BURDEN ALLEGED. PUBLIC MAY HAVE TO PAY. {BY TELEGRAPH. OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] WELLINGTON, Thursday. Estimating that the proposed 200 per cent, increase in duty upon foreign cinematograph films amounted to an extra tax of at least 20 per cent, on the gioss revenue of the distributing companies, -which passed on would represent a huge increase in the operating costs of all theatres, Mr. J. Robertson, secretary of the New Zealand Motion Picture Owners' Association, declared to-day that if the proposals were enforced owners would be given no opticn but to increase their admission charges or else go to the wall. "Considered from any angle you like, said Mr. Robertson, "this proposed increase in duty cannot have the effect of assisting British picture production at the expense of America or any other foreign country, The American distributing organisations in New Zealand, by clauses in their, contracts and by other means, jvvill pass on the whole cost of this duty to tho exhibitors, who, in turn, will be compelled to pass the burden on to the public. The American producer in no case pays; it is the New Zealand public who will pay. "The duty," he went on, "is not levied on the entertainment value of a picture, it is simply levied at so much a foot of celluloid film. A picture may have" an entertainment value of, say, £2OOO, and in another case £2OO, but the same duty is levied in each case. In one instance it represents a tax amounting to 50 per cent, of the entertainment value, and in the other only 6a per cent. Hie entertainment value of a picture can only be estimated when the picture is actually on circuit. "It is a fact," continued Mr. Robertson, "that every British picture with an entertainment value has been bought for New Zealand up to the present. There are in New Zealand a number of companies who buy on the world's markets and two of them deal exclusively in British pictures. There are not made in Britain in a year, however, good and bad together, enough pictures to keep even one theatre in a New Zealand city going with a regular weekly supply. The requirements for New Zealand are roughly 500 feature pictures per annum. If every picture made in Britain came to New Zealand and passed the censor only 10 per cent, of the country's requirements would be met. Every English newsreel comes to New Zealand, and one of the main difficulties in assembling a programme for general purposes is that no British companies exist in England making comedies as short-length entertainment reels. . It is therefore very oDvious that if the Government has all this information ' at> its disposal the impost is not being considered as a means of promoting the showing of British him or of assisting British film productun." In England the negative only from which any number oi copies might be taken was taxed. This meant, said Mr. Robertson,, that in comparison with the proposed New Zealand duty the English duty upon individual prints amounted to a small fraction of a penny a foot. A grave danger was the possibility of the curtailment of supplies, thus reducing the area of choice now open to the exhibitor and enabling the distributors, in effect, to compel the exhibitor to take whatever was available in order to keep his theatre open. If it was taken into account that the number of admissions to picture theatres in New Zealand approximated one-half of the total population, and. further, that if the proposed increase in duty, which on the basis of year's film importations amounted to nearly £86,000 annually, had to be borne by the picture-goers of New Zealand, then the Minister's claim to have lightened the burden of customs taxation by £320,000 was seriously impugned. "The New Zealand picture theatre owner," said Mr. Robertson, in conclusion.' "sees no logical reason for the imposition of a duty which is double the highest imposed in any other Dominion, and which is enormously higher than that levied in England itself."