BRITISH BUDGET DEBATE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23186, 27 April 1945, Page 5

BRITISH BUDGET DEBATE

Double Tax Agreement Approved

Problems Reviewed By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright LONDON, April 25. The Chancellor’s Budget was a good "pedestrian" Budget, Mr Pethick Lawrence (Labour) declared when resuming the debate on the Budget in the House of Commons to-day. He said he thought unanimous support would be given to the arrangement with the United States regarding double taxation, as it took cognisance of the growing international character of industrial ownership. The concession relating to the excess profits tax was a recognition of the hardship imposed by a rigid excess profits tax on small businessmen, he continued. The Labour Party wanted concessions to employers to be justified on their merits and also balanced by equally Justifiable concessions to the workers, but it did not cavil at concessions made. It hoped it would be of some assistance in getting the wheels of Industry turning again. Mr Lawrence said he believed that purchasing power would increase in spite of anything the Chancellor had done, but he believed the extraordinary restraint and Judgment of the British peonle would enable them to avoid inflation, even when purchasing power exceeded the supply of purchasable goods. Tax Reduction Mr G. Lambert (Liberal) said he hoped the Chancellor would in his Interim Budget show that he could reduce taxation. He referred to the scarcity of necessary goods such as clothing and food. The time for reduction of taxation should be when there was a falling on in incomes due to reduction in overtime and when married women left war industries to make way for their husbands returning from the forces.

Sir John Wardlaw Milne (Conservative) said he hoped the agreement on double taxation would be extended to the Dominions and perhaps to other ’nations. He suggested that a reduction in the excess profits tax was absolutely necessary to the recovery of industry and asked if the Government proposed to continue the food subsidies to keep down the cost of living. Sir George Chuster (Liberal National) said that industrialists must know, if they were going to handle things rightly, how the resources in material and manpower were going to be allocated in the years to come after the war. He wanted to see an early international economic conference where each country would place its

factual position on the table and all would endeavour to work out a regime that would make the various positions fit together