PLAYING AT “REFORM.”

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8481, 16 July 1913, Page 6

PLAYING AT “REFORM.”

The Bill introduced into the House of Representatives yesterday to change the assessment of taxation for incometax purposes may be said to constitute the first—and, ive may add, belated—instalment of the reduction of taxation promised by the self-styled “ Reformers, ” It is proposed to exempt from incomes below £7OO per annum £25 for each dependent child under the age of sixteen years. Thus a person having an income of £4OO a year, now paying tax on £IOO, will, if he is the father of four children under sixteen who are dependent upon him for their maintenance, be exempt altogether from the payment of income-tax. The principle of this measure is good, inasmuch as it seeks to give some relief to a section of the community which, broadly speaking, has not fully participated in the general increases that have taken place in recent years in the rewards granted m return for labour. It is somewhat on the lines of the maternity bonus scheme of the Australian Labour party, with the important difference that the latter applies to the whole community, while the MasseyAUen plan reaches but a_ comparative few. While the basic principle of the Bill now before Parliament is to be approved, we take the liberty of saying that its limitations make it a puny and miserable item in comparison with the wealth of promise that was made to reduce the cost of living to people of small means. The great army of working people, the hundreds of thousands who can never hope to earn enough to qualify them to pay incometax at all, are still overlooked, ignored, and forgotten by those who secured votes with pledges now abandoned. Indeed, in the absence of any defined plan to make up the deficiency in revenue that the income-tax concessions must involve; it seems that tho deficit will have to be met by the rank and file of onr industrial army. In the present condition of our political affairs, we should perhaps be thankful jfor small mercies, but the Government (must be told that in contrast with tho iabundanco of its pledges this concesjsion is hut ns a drop of water in the loceah, and that the great masses of tho people are still waiting for that “ reform of the fiscal system by reiducing taxation to lessen the cost of '(living ” which was one of the planks (of tho party’s election platform. To present a few shillings a year to professional people earning anything from i£3oo np to £7OO a year is not a “ re;foim of the fiscal system,” nor of ths slightest help to those people who have (been promised most and who are in the, greatest need of assistance. It is not the man with a salary approaching! £7OO a year who is entitled to merciful; consideration.