STATE AND LOCAL TAXATION

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20894, 25 November 1937, Page 5

STATE AND LOCAL TAXATION

5/6 IN THE £ By Telegraph—P.ess Association WELLINGTON. November 24. Referring to taxation, Mr Henry Kitson, president of the New Zealand Stock Exchange, addressing members of the Association, said that, State and local, it takes 27.6 per cent or 5/6 in the £ of the total value of production in New Zealand. He said that in recent years New Zealand statesmen, like many others, had been thinking in terms of economic nationalism. History had witnessed that this policy, can-led to the ultimate conclusion, was fatal to the economic life of a country that has borrowed from overseas large sums for development in the past, and still requires foreign capital to carry out necessary development and increased production. No Government could be expected to be able to borrow internally and keep increasing the percentage taken in the form of taxes from production. It was correspondingly difficult to induce outside capital to be invested in a country where taxation becomes severe and out of proportion. Trade was being stifled not only by taxation, but by the setting up of trade barriers, by quotas, by exchange control, by licenses, and by clearing arrangements, which were as barbed wire drawn across the field of trade. Confidence in the near and distant future required healthy trading conditions in this country.