"THE LAST STRAW"

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 33, 9 February 1933, Page 12

"THE LAST STRAW"

HOW THE*' PUBLIC WILL PAY

- The manager of a firm doing a large business in all parts of New Zealand, and the Empire, too, remarked to a "Post" representative to-day that he considered the sales tax about the last straw which the already much over-burdened New Zealand camel would be able to bear. "In fact," he said, "I can see the disruption of that quadruped's vertebrae taking place in the immediate future, with the resultant consequences to those responsible for the imposition of the final straw. "There are some innocents," he continued, "who think that the sales tax of 5 per cent, on certain articles simply means that the selling price of. those articles, and only those, will be increased 5 pen cent, by the retailer. This, however, will not be the case; it will hit the public harder th„ that. On many articles, selling at, a small price retailers will be unable to put on the additional 5 per cent.; you can't; for instance, add 5 per cent, to an article retailed at a penny. What will happen, as has happened elsewhere, is that higher pi-iced goods will have their selling price advanced more than 5 per cent, in order to compensate for the 5 per cent, which is not charged on the smaller' lines. And in order to ma__ the price an even number of pence or shillings, the retailer will naturally add to the previous price more than 5 per cent, rather than less, for he.'can't deal with fractions of a penny. The retailer is'naturally going to see that he does not lose by this new imposition, and in the vast majority of cases be can't afford to. » ."The 'long-suffering public is going to* pay, and, generally speaking, pay more than 5 per cent., and in the meantime we are told-by those who sit in j authority to watch the cost of living fall!"