The Butter Fat Tax.

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 634, 17 July 1917, Page 3

The Butter Fat Tax.

Now that factories have closed down for the season, suppliers are able to ascertain the amount of their taxation under the Butter Fat Tax, and the contemplation of the result is Buch as to evoke anger and disgust against the legislature that could impose bo inequitable and unjust an impost upon one of the most hard-work-ing and industrious sections of the community. The net result of the tax is that dairymen have had to pay a trifle over 4 per cent, on the amount of their gross income, which equals a charge of 15a per cow, or m other words, atsuming the value of a cow to be £15, she haa to provide 5 per cent, to the Government on her capital value before returning a penny to her owner, this is without reckoning anything for her maintenance, allows nothing for depreciation or death, provides no land to feed her on, and no labour to milk her. Looked at from whatever point of view it maj , the whole thing from beginning co end was unjust and inequitable. A coal miner, a water- sider, or a sbearer, earning M per week, would escape taxation entirely ; a dairyman earning ££ a week gross income would pay the Government £8 per annum out of the amount, and would have to pay all the labour required m milking, find the cows, the land, and the feed besides. He would have to pay the same priey for all the commodities he required to buy m the way of clothes, boots, groceries, etc., as ihe pther men who pay nothing for taxation. The whole business is co grossly unfair, that if the dairy farmers were enrolled m a Union like the miners, the shearers, or the water- aiders, no Government would have dared to impose such a oharge, as it would have meant their political death. Now that the full facts of the iniquity of the charge are manifest, it is to sincerely hoped the Government will do thehoneßt and right thing, and not only stop the tax for the future, but refund the amounts collected.