Thames Star SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1937. MOTOR TAXATION.

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 20074, 31 July 1937, Page 2

Thames Star

SATURDAY, JULY 31, 1937. MOTOR TAXATION.

"With manc« towards, nona; with charity for all; with firmnet* in tho right, as God gives us to sss ths right."—Lincoln.

A representative of the Automobile Association (Otago), according to a Dunedin message, stated at the annual meeting of the Otago Expansion League that motorists intended to seek relief from taxation by urging the Government to drop several charges, chiefly the tax of 4d a gallon on petrol for general revenue; and since the Canterbury Automobile Association also declared for this particular remission, some Aveeks ago, it may be assumed that the organised motorists of New Zealand will press the argument that this tax was j imposed (in two steps, 1931 and j 1933) in a financial emergency and should now be removed. The effect would be to leave the special tax of 6d a gallon on petrol for roading purposes. For two reasons this attempt to ease the motorist's burden seems to be badly calculated. It has little or no chance of succeeding; and it tacitly accepts the now outworn theory that motorists, as road-users, should be specially taxed for road construction and maintenance. That the Government will agree to forego something like £1,000,000 of revenue, conveniently spread over the year and cheap and easy to collect, on the plea that it is derived from what was understood to be an emergency tax, is a possibility not worth a flutter of hope; the Government faces a budgetary situation in which it will hug such resources and wish they were bigger. But if motorists were to press for a full examination of motor taxation —not merely of petrol taxation —and its place in the scheme of expenditure generally and of roading in particular, they could not well be denied, and they could hardly fail to strengthen their case and make it, in fact, unanswerable. Motorists have no ue'ed to fear the findings of such an investigation. It would almost certainly prove that they are, as a class, too heavily taxed; and it would be quite certain to discredit the theory of special and earmarked taxation, which motorists accepted but should not now be afraid to abandon. Mr. Forbes, as Prime Minister, justified the earliest "raids" on motor tax revenue, against the protests of motorists that they were a breach of contract, declaring bluntly that the earmarking principle was unsound. Motorists disagreed then; they should agree now. They should press for a revision of taxation on the broader and truer theory that the roads belong to the whole community and provide a service of which the benefits are so widely transmitted that no class should be singled out to pay for them. 'The Minister for Transport months ago, promised to investigate the incidence of motor taxation and should be urged to carry out his promise. If motor taxation is not immediately reduced in consequence, at least the ground will be cleared and rights and wrongs emerge, too plainly to be ignored.