GRADUATED TAX.

Wairarapa Age, 7 August 1936, Page 5

GRADUATED TAX.

CONDEMNED BY MR. COATES. WILL FOBCE MEN OFF LAND. HANDICAP ON ENTERPRISE IN CITIES. (By Telegraph—“ The Age” Special.) WELLINGTON, August 6. “When it reaches the sixpenny stage it becomes murderous/’ was the declaration of the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates when in opening the Financial Debate in the House of Representatives to-night, he dis cussed the Government’s revival of the graduated land tax. Where it applied to the country, he said, it was most iniquitous. It would make it impossible to use indifferent land in large areas for grazing and he knew of hundreds of thousands of acres of such land which under this tax must go out of use. The Minister was not proposing to allow any rebate on unimproved value, though when the tax was levied previously there was a rebate of 5 per cent, before the tax was applied. In its effect on cities, it meant that the graduated land tax, plus income tax, would make it difficult for existing companies to carry on and be an effective bar to new enterprise. He asked the Prime Minister to make provision. for a hardship clause in cases where it could be shown that the operation of the graduated land tax would force men off the land. PREMIER nr REPLY. “While we are accused of wrecking things, and told of the country being on the way to ruin and of capital leaving the country,” replied the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage), “I am told that deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank exceeded withdrawals during July by £433,000.” He knew there were people who considered they could run the country without taxing anyone, he said, but there were public services, local and national, which had to be paid for in this way and he would like to do more for pensioners. He would have been delighted to have made the old age pension 30s weekly and he would predict that this time next year Parliament would be discussing a national system of superannuation.