"ROOM FOR INQUIRY"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25364, 23 October 1943, Page 4

"ROOM FOR INQUIRY"

When he addressed the Public Service Association in Wellington this week the Minister of Finance made brief reference to the basis upon which taxation is levied on superannuitants. During the election campaign, Mr Nash recalled, it had been stated that persons on superannuation were unfairly taxed for social security and national security. He agreed that on the surface it looked as if that might be the case. But, he asked, if superannuitants were exempt, what about persons over sixty who were not superannuitants but who had saved their own money? And what about persons who continued to work after they were sixty? Should they be taxed? It is pertinent to remind the Minister of Finance that these are general questions to which the Government is itself committed to find an answer. It was, however, surely less by accident than by deliberate design that the Prime Minister gave an undertaking, on the day before the general election, that questions raised by superannuitants with the Government, including, the payment of social security tax, would receive friendly and sympathetic consideration during the first month after the election. “The questions involved,” Mr Fraser promised, “will receive complete re-examination with a view to removing any anomalies or possible injustices. lam satisfied,” he added, “that there is room for inquiry and rearrangement, and these will be facilitated.” Is the Prime Minister less satisfied on this point than the Minister of Finance? Mr Nash, unless we misread his meaning, has no particular enthusiasm for an inquiry that was apparently considered by the Prime Minister to be urgently necessary, on the eve of the election, when votes were at a premium. “ Within a month ” was Mr Fraser’s undertaking. Yet within the month the Minister of Finance seems to be concerned less with the question whether there are anomalies which should be corrected than with the possibility that a crop of embarrassments might result from an attempt to give effect to the Prime Minister’s promise. Our Wellington contemporary, the Evening Post, has properly pointed out that the social security means test lies at the root of the anomalies of which complaint is made. Why should there be differential treatment as between the man who enjoys a social security pension, free of taxation, and his neighbour who has to pay taxes on the income derived from his own savings or from a superannuation fund to which, in all probability, he has contributed over a long period? There is need for a re-examination of the basis of taxation as affecting these classes of taxpayers. The man who provides for the years of his retirement by his own thrift and without the aid of a superannuation fund may, in many cases, be more in need of relief than the average superannuitant. He should not be overlooked when —or if? —Mr Fraser’s clear promise is put into 1 effect.