EDITORIAL OPINIONS

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

EDITORIAL OPINIONS

NEW TAXATION MEASURES

"TWO EXCELLENT FEATURES"

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "Th» Evening Post.") ' AUCKLAND, This Day. In the course of an editorial on the new taxation, the "New Zealand Herald" says:— "There will be instant recognition and commendation of two excellent features of the statement made by the Minister of Finance in announcing the Government's taxation proposals. The more significant is a highly important deduction permissible from the statement. A fortnight ago .Mr. Coates outlined the programme for the Budget of 1933-34, including a proposal to raise £2,400,000 by additional taxation. Last evening he introduced resolutions to bring into immediate operation five instruments of taxation which he estimated would yield in a full year £2,540,000./ Although be made no reference to the pointj it is surely legitimate for the taxpayers - called upon to sustain these new burdens to presume that the full measure of taxation contemplated for 1933-34 has been proclaimed. With the consolation that they know the worst, -the people of the Dominion will appreciate the other admirable aspect of the statement—the remarkable clarity and thoroughness with which Mr. Coates has expounded every item in. the programme. Fortunately the explanation by Mr. Coates is so precise and so explicit that the inevitable difficulties will not be insurmountable. Far from lightening the weight of taxation, the Government is asking for greater tax revenue than it sought in J932-33, and the disproportion is aggravated by the shrinkage in national income. In the opinion of many people, the Government by its exchange decision has embarked upon an unfortunate policy, the .ffeets of which are manifest in a Budget already in a precarious condition owing to neglect over the last three or four years to, remedy the fundamental causes of instability. As a result, Mr. Coates, as Minister of Finance, has been called upon to meet a situation of unprecedented difficulty and has been compelled to call upon the people of New Zealand for greater sacrifices than ever. Much as the new taxes will be disliked (and the estimated demand of a million and a half from the' sales tax is alone a staggering figure) and the first reaction will inevitably be one of intensex antipathy, there is.no doubt that there will be "a general response to Mr. Coates's appeal for courageous co-opera-tion in confronting and overcoming the difficulties of the situation."