VALUATION OF STOCK

Waikato Independent, Volume XL, Issue 3762, 25 September 1940, Page 2

VALUATION OF STOCK

SOCIAL SECURITY LEGISLATION FARMERS' UNION PROTEST Among the more important matters discussed at the September meeting of the Auckland Executive, New Zealand Farmers' Union, was the new taxation legislation and its effect on farmers. Astonishment and resentment was expressed when the effect of a recent amendment Governing the valuation of stock in Social Security and income tax returns was explained. It appears that farmers are required to show stock held as at 3st March, •. 1940; at approximately market value, and that where this value exceeds, as it will in most cases, the standard .conservative values used from year to year," taxation at 1/9 in the £ is payable on the difference between these values and the values shown twelve months previously. This means that if a farmer valued 1000 sheep at 10/- each as at April Ist, 1939, and his stock remained the same in number as at March 31st, 1940, and he is then required to assess then at 19/ —a figure that has been officially mentioned —he will be compelled to pay taxation on the difference in value, £450, at 1/9 in the £. He will thus be called upon to pay an extra amount of £39 7/6 in taxation. Seething criticism was levelled at this means of extracting money from the section of the community that has been hardest hit by rising costs, and is working longer hours in the nation's interest than any other section. One speaker frankly characterised this new form of taxation as a capital levy on farming. To illustrate what this extra impost means to sheepfarmers alone, if the average increase in valuation insisted on by the Commissioner of Taxes over the Dominion's 31,000,000 sheep amounted to 5/- per sheep,, the extra tax loaded on to the industry, on this basis would amount to no less than a sum of £678,125. This amount is 1/9 in the £ on £7,750,000. Under this unfair enactment a proportionate extra impost will also be loaded on to dairying and other farming industries. The Executive felt that action of the Commissioner of Taxes to be so unfair that immediate publicity should be given to the effects of an enactment at present unknown to most farmers. v . Comment was made that from the

first levying of the unemployment taxation farmers were told to value their stock at a nominal figure, so long as the valuation used was kept constant from year to year.