SMOTHERING TAXATION.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 17, 13 October 1937, Page 4

SMOTHERING TAXATION.

Yesterday' s debate on the Bill fixing the rates upon which land-tax and income-tax for the current financial year — now more than half gone — are to be levied should open the eyes- of a good few people to the course which the present Government's policy is following — taxing to the utmost and spending with prodigal hand. When wooing and wiling the electors two years ago Labour leaders were loud in their condemnation of the heavy taxation to which the people were subjected, declaring that it had reached the bearable limit and that it must not on any account be increased and implying, if not speeifically promising, that, placed in a position to do so, they would see that it was reduced. How, Lhen, do we find that the Labour Party, having attained office on these representations, has carried them out? In its first year its actual collection of ordinary taxation (excluding unemployment tax) ran up to ^27-million. This was close on £5J-million, or just about 25 p.c., more than was levied in the last year of the Coalition Government. For the current year, ending 31st March next, the Finance Minister proposes to collect close on £3o|-million, a further increase of £3§-million on last year's figure and an aggregate increase of just on ^9-million, or little short of 45 per cent., on the amount for the previous Government' s last year. These are the figures as disclosed in Mr. Nash's Budgets for last year and for this, so there can be no gainsaying them. Put in another way, these figures mean that during Labour's first two years of office ordinary taxation (again exclusive of unemployment tax) has gone up from a little over £16 per head of the population, men, women and children, to something over £20, or an average of more than £100 a year for every family of five. This is surely a pretty two-year record for a party that went before the electors on the plea of keeping taxation down. > Then we come to taxation for the Unemployment Fund— inappropriately enough re-christened the "Employment Promotion Fund" — which the previous Government had foimd it possible during its last year to reduce very satisfactorially. Labour orators on the hustings two years ago assured the electors that, given a Labour Government, unemployment would speedily disappear from the face of the land; Inferentially this, of course, meant that unemployment taxation would become unnecessary. But what do we find? The Coalition Government in its last year collected something short of £4-million in unemployment taxation of all kinds. For his second financial year Mr Nash purposes gathering in nearly £5^-million, an increase of well over 25 per cent. Of this a very substantial proportion goes in "sustenance" with no return whatever for it in the way of work and with innumerable cases of fraudulent claims upon it, thus giving some indication of how far the new name bestowed upon the fund has been justified. Then it may interest the eontributors to this taxation— and that means* pretty well everyone — to know thatin the Coalition - Government' s last year the cost of administering this fund was about £200,000, for the current year it is estimated at well over £328,000, an increase of more than 64 p.c. This is no doubt largely the result of a big increase in the number of the staff employed in the Department, which in the two years has gone up by something over 300, whence drawn can be readily guessed and no doubt handsomely paid by the Government that has gained so high a reputation for being generous at other people's expense. This, too, is despite the fact that the number on the unemployment register has been reduced by some 20,000, but, of course, mainly / through being taken over by the Public Works Department for the prosecution of undertakings for whose cost also the people are being taxed, though some of them — South Island railways for instance — are of the most doubtful utility and pretty well certain to involve still further taxation for their operation and maintenance. These are, of course, only some of the high lights that jump to the eye in considering the Government's exercise of the power of unlimited taxation which the electors chose to place in its hands. The inevitable effect is that the industrial enterprises into which so many of the unemployed might otherwise have been gainfully absorbed have been very definitely checked. Thus the number of the unemployed is being reduced with only lamentable slowness, and then mainly as servants of the State or on temporary jobs subsidised from the taxpayers' pockets and providing no real or lasting solu tion of the problem that was to end with the advent of a La bour Government.