COMPANY TAXATION

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 110, 7 February 1928, Page 8

COMPANY TAXATION

“INEQUITABLE INCIDENCE”

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED

Dominion Special Service. Auckland, February 6.

In the course of his annual report to shareholders of the Auckland Gas Company, the chairman (Mr. J. H. Upjon) referred to what was described as the inequitable incidence of the income tax, whereby the company’s very active rivals, the Auckland Electric Power Board, were exempted, while the Gas Company paid £17,600. It was, he said, a differential tax only found in half-civilised countries. The Royal and Parliamentary Commissions had considered the opinions of the chambers of commerce all over the Dominion, and now last and most significant of all the Economic Conference of the League of Nations at Geneva had in no uncertain tones upheld the principle that all industry, whether carried on by private persons or by any Government, general or municipal, should be taxed on the same basis of equality.

“But our Government is superior to all that,” said Mr. Upton, “and is a law unto itself, and no redress is made. Consider what would happen were the Government to extend its operations a little further, undertake the whole business of the country, and apply the same method of exemption as is now applied to municipal and Government trading. All business would be exempt, and the revenue would have to be found by lawyers, agents, teachers, doctors, and editors of newspapers—by the professional classes; in fact, aided by any unfortunate old people who, under happier circumstances, had saved a few pounds for their old age.”