A QUESTION OF FACT

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20523, 13 June 1938, Page 6

A QUESTION OF FACT

The Minister of Labour addressed a meeting at Te Aroha last week, and is reported to have made the claim that the increase in the taxation revenue was due to the growth in the national income. There can be no doubt that the increased internal trade has contributed substantially to the Treasury receipts. The influx of imports alone has had the effect of raising Customs revenue to a very high level, and it will be interesting to see, in the coming Budget, whether the Minister of Finance counts upon this inrush continuing during the current year. More active trading has also increased the returns from direct means of taxation, and perhaps Mr Armstrong intended his statement to apply solely to the past financial year. In the second Budget introduced by Mr Nash no changes were made in the incidence of taxation. The Minister was satisfied that increased yields from existing taxes would provide the revenue required. But clearly Mr Armstrong would be wrong if he claimed that Labour had not, during its term of office, increased taxation. It promised not to do so, but the first Budget brushed away any hopes that the taxpayer may have entertained. Mr Nash admitted that “no increase in the rates of tax would be necessary to provide for all the additional expenditure.” But as the Government wished to increase the expenditure on social services, especially on pensions, Mr Nash added: “I propose to obtain a further £1.000.000 from income tax and slightly more than £SOO.OOO additional land tax.” Those were increases, and private members of Parliament claimed that they had returned nearly £2,000,000 between them. Since then there have been adjustments of the Customs tariffs providing for heavier imposts, so that the claim made by the Minister of Labour is not strictly correct. A larger national income probably has accounted for the greater part of the increased revenue of the State, but there have been increases in the imposts since Labour took office, both in direct and indirect taxation.