COMPLAINT BY MR POLSON

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22505, 13 September 1938, Page 12

COMPLAINT BY MR POLSON

FARMERS AND LAND TAX

effect on owners oi

POORER HOLDINGS

[From Our Parliamentary Reporter.]

'WELLINGTON. September 12. “The Minister for Finance is, I think, the hungriest tax gatherer this country or the British Empire has ever seen said Mr W. J. Poison (National. Strat Srd) when speaking in the second reading debate on the Landl and Income Tax (Annual) Bill, m of Representatives to-mght every . ti'affine the last farthing fioxn every hodv He is searching the moneyof the children He is squeezing ?he n rich r pS l or! h |n P d°°tke poor poorer. taxes on goods, taxes on selling, taxes onbuyfng taxes on salaries, taxes on taxes on income —all sweated by !>B' to wo h wlu'iet Sf- Xfthls oartv goes out of office, as w f u con Jl^ w ently expect it will in another few W fhe S 'Minister for Defence (the Hon, F. Jones); You are looking a long way atl “Of ’ course, all this taxation .is. in line with Labour’s policy ofe bringing all people down to a common level, Mr Poison said, I wonder what the costless credit friends of the Pri ™!| Minister are thinking to-day. We were going to have intelligent use of the public credit. Instead, we are borrowing and taxing. Th e Government has a prejudice against broad acres Most of its members have never had anything to do with farming, or operations PP the land. They have an industrial complex, \ which makes them utterly unfamiliar with the problems of the primary producer. ? !The Government, added Mr Poison hkd put on the graduated land tax again, and made it much ■ heavier than ever.before. He did not know whether the Government was aware of what was happening in other parts of the world. New Zealand’s competitors were hastening to. take it off. The tax pressed most heavily on the occupiers of second and third-class land. It was wrong that they should be penalised by being taxed on their debts