NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20426, 17 February 1938, Page 8

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

An abstract of the Public Account, issued as a supplement to the latest Gazette, gives particulars of the matters mentioned by the Minister of Finance when he issued a preliminary statement a fortnight ago. The revenue has been buoyant but to some extent that creates certain difficulties. The sales tax, for instance, brought in £2,G52,000 during the first nine months of the current year, and that sum represented about one-seventh of the taxation revenue for the period. There is on record a distinct promise made by the Prime Minister to remove that particular impost, and people expect that it will be done when a measure revising the incidence of taxation is brought before Parliament when it resumes next month. The very size of the yield will make it the more difficult for the Minister to find some alternative form of taxation, for his expenditure has been framed along lines that would seem to preclude any possibility of the taxpayers having the burden lightened to that extent. The prospect is made the more remote when it is remembered that the State will have to find revenue for the national superannuation and health insurance schemes, so that even the promised readjustments will not be at all easy. On the expenditure side the favourable margin between the total spent and the proportional appropriations for nine months was largely due, as Mr. Nash explained at the time, to the non-payment of certain debt services. Apparently the non-payment referred to the debt reduction plan and not to interest. In the first nine months of last year the debt reduction payments totalled £1,585,000 whereas this year to December 31 they came to only £83,000. The payments will be made this quarter and will show the normal increase due to the growth of the debt itself. But there were other items where postponement had also made the latest figures look more favourable than might have been expected. For instance last year the sum of £200,000 was transferred as the State subsidy on the superannuation funds. This year no such payment is shown. Is it intended, in view of the introduction of a national scheme, not to pay any subsidies this year, for if so the fact must be kept in mind when the annual accounts are presented. ________