EXEMPTION CLAIM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19622, 3 May 1938, Page 7

EXEMPTION CLAIM

SUPERANNUATION TAX CIVIL SERVICE SCHEME SAFEGUARDS URGED PROTECTION OF FUNDS (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day.

Full preservation of the existing public service superannuation funds, including the continuance of compulsory contributions for present employees and future entrants to the public service, and secondly, provision for contributors to existing superannuation funds to be exempt from that portion of the proposed special tax of Is in the £ which is actuarially assessed as required to provide the proposed additional pensions, were tire proposals put before the Parliamentary committee investigating the superannuation and national health schemes, in a statement presented by Mr. F. W. Millar, honorary secretary of the central committee of the combined public service organisations. Mr. Millar said his organisation represented 11 public service associations, with a total membership of 51,560..

“The statements already made by individual members of the Government have Been to the effect that the existing public service schemes will be safeguarded,” Mr. Millar’s ' statement says, “but in the absence of specificprovisions, it is incumbent upon public service organisations formally to express their unanimous desire for the preservation of their superannuation funds.”

Exemption Claim Reasonable

The statement detailed the financial position of the funds and the history of their growth. It concluded: “Public servants yield the forefront to no section of the community in their publicspirit and willingness to shoulder their fair share of direct and indirect taxation. When, however, there is proposed a special tax for increased pensions, in which except in extraordinary circumstances, the very compulsory nature of their inclusion in the State superannuation funds would debai them from participation, they consider that the committee cannot but agree that our claims for partial exemption from the proposed special tax arc reasonable." , ' .. The Hon. W. Nash asked it the public servants would have objected to an increase in the old age pensions being made from the Consolidated Fund.

Mr. Millar: That all depends. We have had to deal with the scheme as outlined. That question raises another.

Mr. Nash: You, as a service, would not object to the Government providing for the people in the community who cannot provide for themselves, and never will be able to. Mr. Millar: No.

Mr. Nash: If the contribution made for the payment of pensions to everybody does r.ot proportionately exceed the sum that is paid by the State to tlie public servants, would the publicservants object?

Mr. Millar: I do not know whether they would object, the public k" 1 vants were given an inducement to join up and to stick to their jobs in order to get the superannuation benefits.

Mr. Nash: 1 do not say that the public servants have had a fair deal. 1 do not think the superannuation scheme has been properly managed. Mr. Millar, replying to other questions, said he did not think the public servants would object from a social point of view to assistance being given to those who were not able to care for themselves.

A statement was presented to the committee by the Superannuated Public Servants’ Association, which asked leave to present evidence in support and explanation of its proposals. It proposed that every married superannuitant. whose present allowance was £3 a week or less, and every unmarried super-annuitant whose allowance was £1 10s a week or less, should be given the option of transferring to the new national scheme, with Art anv transfer from the present ;o new fund of any contributions to the former. Transfer of Superaiinuitants

It also suggested that any superannuitant, who made a transfer, should be deemed to have £1 a week of income “from other sources,” and that if his present allowance is £1 a week or less, or £1 10s or less, he should, on his transfer to the new scheme, still receive £1 a week from the present superannuation fund as “income from other sources.”

The statement contends that the adoption of these proposals’ would cover quite a large proportion of the hardships borne by men who, under the Finance Act, 1931, were compulsorily retired. It also suggests that tire widows of former super-annuitants should come under the same benefits as those which would be approved under the above proposals.

The final suggestion is that taxpayers over the age of GO and superannuitants, irrespective of age, should, under the new scheme, be required to pay out of their "personal income” only such portion, if any, of tiro new lax of Is in the £ as the State deemed, be allocated to the needs of the health insurance scheme, apart from the national superannuation scheme.