TAX ON CASINOS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20978, 15 September 1931, Page 9

TAX ON CASINOS.

COMPLAINT IN FRANCE. AGITATION FOR RELIEF.' A number of members of the Chamber of Deputies interested in the development of the tourist industry met in Paris recently to discuss proposals for removing the heavy burdens now imposed upon the casinos of the various seaside and watering places in France. Tlie meeting was called by M. Delesalle, who said that the general financial crisis had hit very severely some of the most popular resorts in France, and especially those where casinos were among the principal attractions. He mentioned Aix-les-Bains, Deauville, Dieppe, Biarritz, Nice. Touquet, and Cannes. An examination of the accounts of these places, the speaker said, showed that lasi year their gross receipts were 21 per cent, lower than those of 1929, and their profit and loss account showed a deficit of £BO,OOO. Judging by their progress down to recently, he continued, their receipts during the current year would be less than half of those of 1929. M. Delesalle says he finds one reason for this state of affairs in the heavy taxation to which the casinos are nowsubjected. Before the war their com* bined State and municipal taxes amounted to less than 25 per cent.; they now amount to 75 per cent. During the pasfc three years the seven casinos mentioned, with gross receipts of £5,600,000, paid in taxes £4,280,000. Unless taxation was reduced, he added, it would be a case of killing the goosa that lays the golden egg-