ELLIOTT AND WARD.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 12014, 17 March 1920, Page 5

ELLIOTT AND WARD.

Per Press Association, Wellington, March 15. Rev Howard Elliott has handed to the press the following statement in reply *to a statement made by Sir Joseph Ward on the eve of his departure for Australia,: On the question of the alleged exemption of Roman clergy from incomb tax, the answer furnished oy Sir Joseph Ward, as ex-Minister of Finance, ,on thin question, answers nothing, and is another of the adroit evasions with which wo are becoming familiar. On the surface it would appear that his letter to the Minister in charge of the Land and Income Tax Department, and Jthe reply thereto by a the Commissioner of Taxes, had completely refuted the suggestion made, but that is not so. The Commissioner of Taxes wrote: ‘Priests are not exempt from income tax if in receipt of stipend exceeding the statutory exemption.” That is to say, if priests receive stipends they are not exempt if the stipends exceeds the statutory exemption, hut it is claimed by the church that priests do not receive stipends unless they are chaplains to some public insitution. They are said to receive only free "will or voluntary offerings, which do not constitute a stipend. Sir Willlan Ridgway wrote in the Loudon Times on this subject in July 28th and August Bth last, challenging anyone to prove that he was in error in alleging that Roman priests in Ireland and England were exempted from income the above mentioned grounds. The same plea operates to their advantage in Canada and Australia, and I have reason to believe that it operates also In New Zealand. It is a pure technicality, but it serves its purpose. Almost every minister’s salary or stipend is raised by voluntary offering, though it be paid by church officials to the minister in monthly cum, and the plea that a Roman priest has no stipend, and therefore cannot make a return, is nonsense, It has been estimated that the average income of the ordinary parish priest greatly exceeds the average stipend of the ordinary minister. Under the usual interpretation of the law, bachelor priests are exempt, while married clergy have to pay income tax. This ia an injustice, not only to the ministers but to every section of taxpaying members of the community.