TRADE BEING STIFLED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 280, 25 November 1937, Page 9

TRADE BEING STIFLED

NEW ZEALAND TAXATION I [ Per Press Association. ] WELLINGTON, Nov. 24. : Referring to taxation, Mr. Henry ‘ Kitson, president of the New Zealand ' Stock Exchange, addressing mem- ’ bers of the association, said that the State and local bodies take 27.6 per’ cent, or 5s 6d in the £ of the total value of production in New Zealand. He said that in recent years New Zealand statesmen, like many others, had been thinking in terms of economic atioalism. History had witnessed that this policy, carried to the ultimate conclusion, was fatal to the economic life of a country that has borrowed from overseas large sums for development in the past and still required foreign capital to carry out necessary development and increased production. No Government could be expected to be able to borrow internally and keen increasing the percentage taken in the form of taxes from production. It was correspondingly difficult to induce outside capital to be invested in a country where taxation had become severe and out of proportion. Trade was being stifled not only by taxation, but by the setting up of trade barriers by quotas, by exchange control, by licences, and by clearing arrangements, which were as barbed wire drawn across the field of trade.