The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER. 3, 1917. BUDGET CHANGES

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9755, 3 September 1917, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, SEPTEMBER. 3, 1917. BUDGET CHANGES

A number of minor changes with regard to the Budget proposals were announced by the Minister for Finance (the Bight Hon. Sir Joseph Ward) in his reply on the second reading debate on the Finance Bill. The main features of the bill, however, remain unaltered. This was, indeed, inevitable,' seeing that the money must bo ■iind, and that , the critics themselves had suggested no workable alternative that would stand the slightest chance of being adopted under present conditions, with the war on and with the “National Government” in power. THe plea for discrimination in taxation in favour of married men with large families has been met to a certain extent by extending the £25 additional exemption under the income tax to every child of ' a married man. Bnt this ’exemption is, after all, a small matter as compared with the additional amount ,of taxation paid in respect of each 'child through the Customs taxes on the necessaries of life; and it ntterly fails to relievo the most deserving cases, the cases in which the hardship is the greatest—the cases, that is to say, of the men with large families, yet with incomes far below the limit at which income tax becomes payable- It may well be that, as Sir Joseph Waid argued, a tax on bachelors, so long as other countries do not tax them, would tend to drive bachelors out of New Zealand; but it is certain that dt would take a pretty stiff tax on single men to make the amount they pay in taxation equal to that paid by the married man with the average family, to say nothing of the taxation paid by the man with five, six, seven, or more children. So far as it goes, however, discrimination in favour of married men with families is a wise and a welcome one. Another welcome change is the proposal to refund to small shareholders, whose incomes from all sources do not exceed £3OO, the income tax paid on their dividends by public companies.

Sir John Findlay’s criticism that the appeal under the clauses providing for compulsory contributions to the War Loans was not from “Philip drunk to Philip sober,” but from Philip sober to Philip sober, being in reality from the Commissioner of Taxes to the Commissioner of Taxes, has led to the extension of the powers of the Boaid of Appeal, making the decision of the board as a whole, not of “the Commissioner of Taxes alone, final; and Sir Joseph Ward stated that he will, in addition, the House to include in the board the Auditor and ControllerGeneral. Consideration is also to be given to the question of the ano-m.lous and dangerons position with regard to the taxation of mutual life assurance associations, revealed by Sir John Findlay in the coarse of his speech on the second reading. On the subject of the tea tax Sir Joseph Ward stood to his guns. He insisted that that tax and the concessions to old-age pensioners and others are bound up together,

that the money must be raised, and that members must not seek the popularity attaching to the additional 5s per week to pensioners while shunning the Unpopularity attaching to the tea tax; and he roundly declared that any merging of members from both sides of the House to defeat the tea tax would not bo a fair way of carrying out the political truce. Sir . Joseph also refused to make any change in regard to the beer tax; but ho intimated that he was quite walling to change the taxation on cigarettes, if the change would result in increased revenue. He could not, ho said, make changes that would give less revenue. It seemed, however, that by letting go the £40,000 proposed in the Finance Bill and by adopting the suggestion made by Mr T. M. Wilfo-id, M.P., they could increase the revenue by £BO,OOO to £IOO,OOO and at the same time prevent the wholesalers and the retailers from getting anything more out of the people on the ground that the Excise had been increased. He was awaiting a report from the Controller tf Customs on the matter, and he had every reason to believe that his report would be favourable to the proposed change. Wo trust that it will. The increase of revenue will be very welcome; and cig-arette-smokers will certainly not object to the additional Id per packet on cigarettes if the Treasurer gets twenty-five-25ths of the penny, instead of only ninc-2Sths es under the original proposals.