CINEMATOGRAPH BILL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19805, 28 November 1927, Page 11

CINEMATOGRAPH BILL.

PUBLIC WILL PAY MORE. PASSING ON THE HIRE TAX. " It is fairly evident that Mr. Coates has introduced the Cinematograph Films Bill so early m order that it may be thoroughly considered and revised before becoming law, and he will have the cooperation of all exhibitors in making the bill as near perfect as possible," said Mr. Beaumont Smith, managing director of J. C. Williamson Films, Limited, yesterday At the same time, Mr. Smith considered the Government would have been better advised to have awaited the passing of the similar measure now being debated in the British Parliament. The effect of the bill, if passed in its present form, would be that the tax would be added by the film exchanges to the hire of the films. Exhibitors would thus have to pay more, and that chargo would be passed on to the public. The profits ot the exchanges were already taxable in the usual way. He calculated that to earn £2OOO for a picture, it would probably cost a film exchange 70 per cent, of that amount for working expenses, duty and cost of the film. If that film were an American production, £250 would be paid in the hire tax it was proposed to impose. The Government had recently contemplated a lax of threepence a foot, which would have meant a tax of about £75 for each film of the ordinary type. Thus the new proposals would impose a tax almost four times as great as that involved in the former scheme. The tax of five per cent, on the New Zealand films and seven and a-half per cent, on British .was also criticised by Mr. Smith. Instead of assisting the British production, the Government proposed to inflict a greater burden, a policy that was difficult to understand.