NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 123, 18 February 1919, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY

The. British taxpayer no doubt will welcome the action of the Home Government in instituting a thorough inquiry into the incidence of the income tax, including the double taxation of colonial incomes. This latter is one of those long recognised . injustices over which somehow it has never been possible to arrive at an agreement. To-day the prospects are more hopeful than in the past, and an equitable adjustment may be looked forward to at no distant date. So far as the incidence of the income tax in New Zealand is concerned it does not require the investigations of a Eoyal Commission to expose its inequitable nature. The unfairness of the taxation of the incomes of shareholders of public companies has been exposed and admitted over and over again. It is not necessary at the moment' to recapitulate the facts now to stress the increasing hardship and injustice which have been inflicted under the high scale of taxation necessitated by the war. Sir Joseph Ward, like __ other Finance Ministers, _ has bee'n too concerned to secure' his revenue by the easiest possible means to give any serious attention to the merito of the matter. As a consequence many men and women of small incomes to-day are being taxed on as high a scale as the richest in the land, and most people know how high that scale has reached under war conditions. A revision of the incidence of the income tax in New Zealand'is very urgently needed.

Surely ifc is.a little curious that New South Wales should deem it' necessary to impose a' four days' quarantine, on vessels from New Zealand, whereas' only one day's quarantine is imposed here on vessels from New South Wales. New Zealand'' is practically clear of influenza, whereas in New South Wales, though happily the disease has not yet reached serious dimensions, there is just .cause for concern. If New South Wales is acting reasonably in the matter of quarantine then , obviously we are taking risks.

A German official message regarding a Bolshevik outrage at the Baltic port of Windau holds attention less on account of the news it immediately presents than as suggesting a- possible sequel. It states that when the Soviet troops entered Windau they took prisoner pighty German soldiers, who were shot. The story may be true or false—the Soviet troops, according to the best available information, have been, guilty frequently of even worse outrages—but it seems by no means unlikely in any case that Germany under her present rulers may be casting about for an excuse for opening a campaign in Bussia, in the hope of gaining some compensation there for the general failure of her predatory schemes. Under the revised armistice conditions, it is reported to-day, the Germans have been ordered to eease their offensive against the Poles, and if the Entente plans in regard to Poland are carried out in an orderly way that country will presently extend to the Baltic, as a barrier to a German advance into Russia. Germany, of_course, will strive by every means in her power to avert this development, and the opening of a campaign against the Bolsheviki may suggest itself as one means to that end.