The Wanganui Herald (Published Daily.) TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1915. WAR TAX PROPOSALS.

Wanganui Herald, Volume L, Issue 14697, 31 August 1915, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald (Published Daily.) TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1915. WAR TAX PROPOSALS.

“Unless the House materially alters the Budget proposals in the direction of a better apportionment of the burdens the community must bear, the major portion of the additional money to bo, raised will be taken-from the wrong pockets.” This is the candid opinion of the Napier News, which thinks ' that when the proposals oome to .be carefully examined there will be a substantial change of opinion from that first formed by critics, who were inclined to acquiesce in the proposals. Taking first the revenue proposed to bo derived from land tax and income tax, the Telegraph points out that last year tho income tax produced £540,318. It is proposed that this year it shall produce £1.090,000, or more than double the levy of last year. .The land tax last year produced £799,640, and tliis year it is to contribute £886,000. In concise terms the income tax is increased by over 100 per cent., the land tax by less than 13 per cent. Our contemporary is not concerned to point out the general unfairness of income tax as opposed to land tax, on the ground that whereas the source of land tax is everlasting, and improves with the lapse of time under ordinary conditions of settlement and development, most incomes turn upon personal exertion which may lie rendered impossible at any moment by an illness or an accident. It .is more concerned to point out that an income tax is one of the imposts which works downwards, and is in the end paid in print by other than those who in the first case make the payment. Tlie income tax affects consumption, and thus affects trade and industry, tending to make comiriodities dearer. In so far as this tendency is felt the income tax is a tax upon consumers, who are to be additionally struck at all round under the proposals of the Financial Statement. Two millions sterling additional lias to be raised. Of this total only about £ 1(10,000 is to be raised by taxation which cannot bo passed on or which is not directly or

indirectly a tax’upon the consumer. While >uly £B6,ooo"'additional is to be asked Tom tho owners’of-land the unimproved value of which is £220,000,000, from the general public close upon two millions is :aken in the shape of increased railway, elegraph, and telephone charges, increased taxes on exchange and business jransactions, and through the Customs and Excise. - In the opinion of the Telegraph some if tho proposals null tend tb defeat theffi'ielves, as for instance the suggestion to also the minimum telegraph message •barge by 30 per cent., and the telephone mreaii charge by 100 per cent., which will tend to cause a shrinkage in receipts. ■ fhe Napier paper characterises as grossly unfair in incidence as well as in principle the proposal to raise the tax on cheques md receipts of sums of £2 and upwards, by 100 per cent. On this point it says; ,if the cheque tax had to be increased (hat object could not be gained fairly, if every cheque must , bear a Government stamp of 2d, then whether the cheque is, for £1 or £IO,OOO the tax must be the •;ame in, amount, although in the first case it is 10,000 times greater than in the latter. But, this, need not apply to the tax upon receipts. ; The law is unfair enough now. By it a receipt for £2 pays the same tax as a receipt for £2OOO or £20,000. Tliis should not have been perpetuated and emphasised and mode worse. If the receipt tax had to be increased, the increase should have been on a percentage basis, a tax of, say, Id up to £lO, rising by increments of Id for vvery succeeding £lO or part of £lO.