HOSPITAL TAXATION

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 217, 9 June 1943, Page 8

HOSPITAL TAXATION

Views Of Ratepayers’

Association

“The considered opinion of the Wellington Ratepayers’ Association is that hospital service, being a national requirement, should be paid for from the resources of the whole community, not partly only from the whole community and then for th? second part from a selected section by means of a super or double tax on that section," says the chairman or the association, Mr. 11. H. Miller, in a further statement of its views on the incidence of hospital taxation. “The National Council of the Labourers’ Federation opposes this view. It believes that the entire responsibility tor hospital costs belongs to property, and that the recent action of the Government in granting hospital boards an extra rf/a head has the effect of relieving large property holdings to the extent ot £250,000 this year. This statement is not correct in fact. In the first place, the measure of relief granted to hospital boards will be passed on, in the spread, to thousands of small home-owning ratepayers throughout the Dominion. tsecondly, the relief granted is not a relief from payment, but relief from direct taxation on one section to spread it over the whole. All must ultimately pay, but in a fairer distribution of the burden through income-tax or some other means which all governments have for raising money fdr the Consolidated Fend. Ihe bogy presented by the National Council of the Labourers’ Federation that the large property holdings will escape responsibility is therefore exploded. Large property owners are, in the main, also large payers of tax per medium of (1) land tax, (2) income tax on rents from the large buildings which they own and on which they already pay heavy municipal rates, and (3) income tax on profits from business carried on in those properties. How then does this , section of the taxpaying community dodge any of its responsibility? Certainly not by a fairer redistribution of the costs of hospital services. „ ~ ' Section Doubly Taxed.

“A study of the principles of taxation will convince all fair-minded people that the only equitable method of raising taxation is to spread the burden as evenly as possible over the whole community. The present Government has recognized and committed itself to this principle in its social security legislation. Why is it that when hospital costs must be met the Government persists in taxing one section doubly? The reason is that the Government, alas, like all its predecessors, is taking the line of least resistance. Property owners have fewer votes to offer than the total of the Test of the community, so pinching them is not a very dangerous game from a political standpoint; and property is always in the eye of the tax gatherer. , , „ "A second reason why the Government persists in carrying on an injustice is that the present system is a relic of the past when hospital costs were met (1) by Government subsidy; (2) by ratepayer levy; and (3) by patients’ fees. Social security has relieved the patient of payment at the hospital by making him pay before -he becomes ill; the whole community pays into a pool for this purpose. The whole commufiity also pays the Stine subsidy through its taxes to the Consolidated Fund, but a third part is still, demanded of the ratepayer even though he joins in the other payments. “Councillor J. D. Sievwright is right when he calls .Mr. Castle, chairman of the hospital board, to book for telling the people, in effect, to be satisfied with a sop of 3/-, when in fact they should lie up in arms demanding a readjustment which will be fair to all. What Mr. Nash has done is merely to peg the injustice to the figure of 1942-3. If the 3/- had not been granted the hospital board would have been forced to extract a considerably increased sum from ratepayers this year to meet the greatly extra costs of what is, after all, now a social security or State hospital. The Government has done the right thing, but it has not gone far enough. Satisfaction will not he given till an unfair burden is lifted from the shoulders of a section of the community which is being unjustly treated and is spread over the whole community.”