THE TAX BILL

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3272, 27 February 1937, Page 5

THE TAX BILL

DISTRIBUTION ANALYSED DIRECT AND INDIRECT The time allowed taxpayers to pay their income taxes has now all but expired, and the extraordinary increases in their tax demand notices have brought home to them forcibly that social transformation has to be paid for (says a statement by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand). But unprecedentedly heavy as incometax is this year on the individual, this item is only one of his burdens.

The whole yield from income-tax represents less than 20 per cent of the total taxation that is being raised this year by the Government. And the individual taxpayer is by no means paying the whole of this 20 per cent; companies, which rank as individuals in New Zealand for income-tax purposes, will pay an appreciable share of the £6,000,000 from income taxes this year.

Not only is there; the direct unemployment taxation, but millions are also paid by the people in indirect taxation. The following table gives the various items of taxation as a percentage of total taxation, and shows how income taxation, oppressive as it is, is less than a fifth-of the whole of the huge sum that is being raised this year of faxes:

With regard to a nation's total tax bill, and the hidden taxation burden an overseas commentator has remarked that "if that tax bill had to be paid all at one time by the taxpayer by a direct tax, instead of in driblets in indirect taxes, there would be a revolution which would be recorded in history as a very snappy affair, and one remarkably effective in reducing, the cost of Government."

The Prime Minister stated in Dunedin a few days ago that "before two years had passed there would be a transformation in New Zealand that even the most optimistic of them had never dreamt of in the clays that had gone." But already the Dominion has been transformed into probably the most highly taxed countrv in the world.

Percentage of total. 30.0 ...... 2.0 Sales Tax ::;;;•" 9.6 Film Hire Tax .2 Gold Export Duty .4 Highways Taxes 8.4 Stamp & Death Duties 10.7 Land Tax 4.3 Income Tax 19.8 Miscellaneous .7 Unemployment Tax .... 13.9