COST OF SECURITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23133, 3 September 1938, Page 14

COST OF SECURITY

PUBLIC NOT DELUDED HIGHER PRICES INVOLVED CHAMBER OF COMMERCE VIEW [by TELEGRAPH —PRESS ASSOCIATION] WELLINGTON, Friday "The introduction in the House of Representatives of an amendment bringing companies into the taxation net for the purpose of the Social Security Bill has come as a thunderbolt," says a statement issued by the Associated Chambers of Commerce.

"This new development means a heavy increase in tho already staggering burden of taxation and costs which is being carried by company enterprise in this country. If any evidence was needed of the utter unsoundness of the financial basis of the present social insurance scheme, it is amply provided by the application of this tax to companies.

"It is an open confession by tho Government that all its expressed confidence in the ability of the country to carry the cost of the scheme by reason of expanding production was merely a smoke-screen, and emptiness of words. Before the so-called security scheme is even under way the Government is desperately casting about to find the extra money needed to float it, thus violating tho undertaking given so recently in the Houso by the Minister of Finance, the Hon. W. Nash, that, in the opinion of the Government, the scheme could bo carried by the country without any increase in taxation."

After referring to the successive burdens which havo been imposed on companies over the last two years, tho statement says that, by bringing companies under the social insurance taxation, the Government followed tho old device of bleeding the taxpayer white without lotting him know it, by means of indirect taxation, but it was an underrating of the growing knowledge and intelligence of the man in tho street to think that he had not come to realisation of the fact that indirect taxation, such as that on companies, was borne, not by rich people or organisations, but by ordinary investors and the general consuming public. The consuming public generally, even if holding no shares in companies, could not escape from the effect of this now company tax any more than it could from the existing company taxes. Living costs would rise further, and that would Be part of the additional price the public would have to pay for the Social Socurity Bill.

HOSPITAL REACTIONS TARANAKI OUTLOOK [by telegraph—PßESS association] NEW PLYMOUTH, Friday Capital expenditure of more than £IOO,OOO, involving an increase in hospital rating of 42.3 per cent, is 1 expected to_ bo the result of the Government's social security legislation, according to a report of a special committee of the Taranaki Hospital Board. Extra ward accommodation is estimated to cost £30,000, administrative and out-patients' block £25,000, maternity block £15,000, staff accommodation £30,000, and other extensions £2500, a total of £102,500. To finance this sum and pay additional stjff would cost £29.604 annually, of which it is estimated £19,589 would be provided by the Government, leaving £10,015 to be levied on the ratepayers.