The Press Tuesday, November 25, 1930. Taxation.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20094, 25 November 1930, Page 10

The Press Tuesday, November 25, 1930. Taxation.

A cable message yesterday reported that Sir Archibald Weigall, who will be remembered in the Dominion as a fairly recent Governor of South Australia, had announced the fact of his being forced by the severity of taxation to close his country house. It would be easy to make too much of Sir Archibald's misfortune —and he might seem to be making too much of it himself, before the public —if it were not quite certain that the same burden is bending and breaking many other backs and that the necessity for relief ought to be emphasised, and indeed advertised, in every effective way. Whether an ex-Governor (and a member of the Select Committee on National Expenditure) keeps his house in the country open or shuts it may not be an important n tional question; but every man knows best where the shoe pinches. If Sir Archibald has to leave Petwood, to save local rates and taxes and upkeep, other men must cut down their allocations to reserve and must postpone capital expenditure on business reorganisation, new buildings, new plant, new processes, research, and so on. The Treasury devours the funds which should strengthen and expand industry. From Sir Archibald it takes three-fifths of his income, a proportion which shows that Dean Inge was less gloomy than he might have been, the other day, when he contrasted the happy Victorians' sixpenny income tax with the present-day ten shillings. Mr Snowden himself, of course, gave figures in the House of Commons, a few months ago, revealing that income tax and supertax alone absorb more than half of the higher incomes. Thesf facts are appalling, and, if Sir Archibald Weigall's explanation of them holds good to any extent, shameful as well. It does hold good, as a member of the Government has testified and boasted. Delivering the presidential address at the Labour Party's Llandudno Conference, Miss Susan Lawrence extolled the very process that Sir Archibald describes as " vindictive " confiscation." She found n pretty name for it —Robin Hood finance; but a romantical description does not alter the vicious character or the vicious effect of what she was admiring, and that was the Government's success in taking money from the rich to give it to the poor. Though this would be at the best of times the nonsense of the redistributive theory, at the present time, when it means robbing and enfeebling industry to support those who suffer by industry's impoverishment and erifeeblement, it is disastrous nonsense. To condemn Mr Snowden for his colleague's folly would be unfair. Even he, however, has lately blamed Parliament for the Government's failure to bring down expenditure. The blame cannot be shifted in that way; but it makes little difference where it lies, on Cabinet or on Parliament, or on both. The truth is very much as Sir Archibald Weigall puts it: State expenditure, supported by unfairly distributed taxation, is used as a means of bribing the electorate. The many are coaxed and won with benefits paid for by the few, though the benefits have Ions: since exceeded the country's capacity to pay for them as luxuries. The Labour Government is not the first offender. AH Parties and Governments share—not equally, of course—the responsibility for engaging in this reckless competition for popular favour, which has been pushed as far in New Zealand as anywhere. Ita influence is deplorable, not only because it inflates and sustains expenditure but because it gradually corrupts the sense of political responsibility, in the politician and in the elector; and this is the graver evil. For this reason, no political reform could be more desirable than a revision of the system of taxation, which would make a much wider section of the community liable to be directly taxed, low as the minimum might be and would have to be. When the politician knows that he cannot promise the crowd something for nothing, and when the elector knows | that he cannot get anything for nothing, political sanity will have been re-established.