WAIMATE PATRIOTIC TAX

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21993, 19 June 1941, Page 3

WAIMATE PATRIOTIC TAX

Returned Soldiers’ Proposal Secretary Replies To Criticism Commenting yesterday on a letter by Mr P. G. Withers, jr„ in “The Timaru Herald.” criticising the patriotic tax proposal adopted at the annual meeting of the Waimate branch of the Returned Soldiers’ Association, the secretary of the branch (Mr d’A. S. L. Grut) stated that Mr Withers failed to distinguish between patriotic funds and patriotic efforts. “Under the proposal put forward by the Waimate branch of the Returned Soldiers’ Association, women would not be precluded from making the comforts enumerated by Mr Withers,” Mr Grut said. “Because funds raised in various districts reach the Patriotic Council without deduction, this does not mean that the funds have been raised without cost. Many Items of cost could be enumerated, but the principal one is the use of cars to bring goods to depots and to take performers and the public to concerts, all to induce people to part with a little more cash which could be collected by merely adding another line to the income tax assessment.

“Mr Withers quotes Mr Nash to the effect that only five per cent of the population realised the implications of the war,” Mr Grut proceeded. “Does this not bear out the Waimate contention that everyone is not contributing to voluntary efforts in proportion to his or her means? I have heard of no well founded criticism of the way patriotic councils are doing their work. As the major portion of Mr Withers’s letter is taken up with that aspect of the matter, the only part left for us to answer is his suggestion that hundreds of well paid jobs for patriots would come into existence if patriotic funds were raised by taxation. The rest of Mr Withers’s letter Is so well written that I think he should be given an opportunity of reconsidering that suggestion before it is criticised.”