TAXING INDUSTRIES

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 54, 26 November 1921, Page 3

TAXING INDUSTRIES

Sir, —Mr. Massey’s abandonment of tho kerosene duty and his expressed indifference as to the fate of the petrol duty may make it appear like flogging the dead horse to suggest that tho second of these proposals should lx? finally pigeonholed with the first. But politicians are so apt to overlook little things of this sort that perhaps you will allow mo to remindw the Prime Minister through your columns that a duty on petrol would bo even a more grievous tax upon industry than the duty on kerosene would have on the back-blocks settlers and rural workers. No doubt when the Minister of Cub toms proposed a petrol duty in his now tariff he, had in mind the few hundred people who run motor-cars purely for pleasure. If it were possible to extract a bigger contribution to the public revenue from these people without adding to the taxation upon industries the experiment might bo worth trying. But tho Minister cannot discriminate in a matter of this khid, and what he has to remember is that the great bulk of the petrol used in this country is used for industrial purposes. The people that would be hit by tho duty are the people least able to bear additional taxation at tho present time. There are thousands of milking machines in the country depending upon petrol for their motive power, thousands of other dairy appliances, hundreds of shearing plants, pumping plants, a considerable number of fishing boats and small coastal craft, and other industrial undertakings of one kind and another. Both the Prime Minister and the Minister of Customs wish well to those industries, as they do to tho farmers as a whole, whose motor-cars where they have

them, are used mainly in running their business. But, as I already have eaid, in the need for money and tho haste or legislation those facts are apt to be overlooked. Hence this letter. I need not enlarge upon the suggestion that the money obtained from the petrol duty would lie employed in improving the roads. We all know the value of good roads, but it is obvious that in the present crisis Mr.' Massey will require every pound he cun obtain from legitimate taxation, and other sources for national purposes without relieving the local bodies of any of their ordinary obligations. We must do without luxuries for a time, if their enjoyment means adding to the huge burdens our industries already are bearing.—l am, etc., FREE INDUSTRY.