THE NEW TAXATION

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 300, 13 September 1920, Page 6

THE NEW TAXATION

HOW IT WILL EMBARRASS INDUSTRY AND JUMP THE COST OF LIVING

There appears to be an opinion iu many minds that the new taxation proposals of the Government, it carried out in their entirety, are going to bring about a condition of things which may tend to make life a much harder proposition than it has been hitherto. There are some manufacturing companies, remarkid one commentator, who will be able to pass their burden on to the public in the form of increased charges, but that, instead of solving a problem, only serves to create a fresh one, as the pnssing-on process has pretty well reached its limit now. According to some, the Government has made the mistake of thinking that, the big company means tho big man, when in most cases it means nothing \tf the sort. There are thousands of companies whose capital has been subscribed by comparatively poor peoplepeople who are, in their advanced years, dependent on their dividends for a living,, and who have in their younger years wurked very hard to enable them to make such a provision for their declining yoars. It is these people that the new taxation proposals will strike by collecting from them in many cases, the maximum impost of Bs. 9d. in ; the £. One gentleman, with a long experience of many Wellington companies, asked: "And if such companies are to be taxed in this way, where is the small man to invest his money He has not enough to go in for advancing money on mortgage; and the Government has already succeeded in making house property a burden rather than an asset, and now it is proposed to so reduce the dividend return by taxation- that the small man will, reluctantly, I suppose, have to put his money into Government stock. Perhaps that is what the Government is aiming at-I don't know. Anyhow, they have suggested perhaps the most unpopular form of collecting money they could de' vise."

GAS COMPANY'S POSITION PRICE OF~GAS MAY BE DOUBLED. .Dr. Prendergast linight, the chafnnan of direotw-s ot u'no Wellington Gas Company, is considerably perturbed as to the effect of tho new taxation proposals. He states that the company's shareholders are mostly small people, upon whom illio new impost will bear very hardly. Their lot had not been.a very enviable one for some time past, and the prospects were not at all bright. If out of i4f1,000 profit the Government was going to annex J;2(i,000, tho shareholuera must suffer. But tho position to-day with the company had another aspect altogether. In order to keep pace with the growing demands of AVellington iW company was compelled to put in new plant, which would run into a lot of money. As things were the company could not go to the public in tho ordinary way and ask for tho money at the marker rate of interest, because they were not foolish enough to suppose Hint the investor would respond as things are. Yet the works had to be extended and brought up-to-date, and money Jiad to be rinsed to enable tho company to do it, so the only means of securing such money was to offer inducements to the investor by making the position of illie company more attractive, and to do that it might yet be found necessary to double the price of gas. . So the public would see how tho new taxation directly or indirectly was going'.to'affect everybody.