MAORI LAND TAXES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6558, 27 August 1948, Page 8

MAORI LAND TAXES

AS OTHERS SEE US VIEWS EXPRESSED IN SYDNEY BULLETIN Cut spending, cut taxes, revive incentives: in a nutshell this is New Zealand businessmen’s blueprint for prosperity, and, with Labor’s 13th Budget due in less than a month, they’re building hopes of long overdue tax relief. Little Maoriland, carrying a tax load of £l4O million annually, is the most taxridden and overgoverned country in the world. It’s exhibit No. 1 for State extravagance, outsize State departments, yed-tape and beaucracy. Sorely-tried industry, struggling 'uphill, doesn’t know where to turn for capital to •replace old machinery and plant or buy new, and traders, hedged round with controls and overloaded with costs, aren’t finding it easy to keep stocks abreast of needs as prices go higher. On the employment front the State has all others licked as taxmoney is poured out in unequal competition, with State, local-body, business, institution and private employers all bidding against one another for workers at fancy rates of pay for short hours. ; With the labor force too small to go round, production and living costs higher than ever, business and every John Citizen taxed to the limit, and an average,of 8s in every £ seized by the Treasury, Maorilanders are working two days out of every five to meet taxes. Yet even this doesn’t satisfy the Labor spendthrifts, who take millions additional in loans to support their big spending spree. Government heads scorn to hold out so much as a carrot to stimulate industry or private worker, but draw tighter the maze of restrictions and controls. If taxes were halved—and they’d still be twice as high as in 1936, when Labor first got its hands in the reins —Maorilanders would have to work just one day a week for the State, would have more money in purses and pockets, and wouldn’t be so. hit by price's; but will Maoriland Laborites bring themselves to wield the economy axe? It’s an idea as old as Adam Smith that the State and everyone is better off when every Tom, Dick and Harry is left enough of his wages to keep him, the missus and the kids happy and to give him a will to work. The same goes for industry.