N.Z. TAX BURDEN

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 53, 25 November 1937, Page 5

N.Z. TAX BURDEN

preBB ABBOciation,)

27 Per Cent of Productiou

(By Telegraph—

WELLINGTON, Last Night. Referring to taxation, Mr. Henrj Kitson, president of the New Zealand Stock Exchange, addressing membera of the association, said that, State and local, it takes 27.6 per cent., or 5/6 in the pound, of the total value of production in New Zealand. In recent years New Zealand stateamen, like many others, had been thinking in terms of economic nationalism. History witnessed that this poliey, carried to its • ultimate conclusion, was fatal to the economic life of a eountry that had borrowed from overseas large sums for development in the past. and still required foreign capital to carry out the necessary development and in--creased production. No Government could be expected to be able to borrow internally and keep inereasing the percentage taken in the form of taxes from production. It was correspondingly difficult to .induce oubside capital to be invested in a eountry where taxation had become severe and out of proportion. Trade was being stifled, not only by ' taxation, but by the setting up of trade barriers by quotas, by exchange control, by licences, and by clearing arrangements which were as barbed wire drawn across tbe field of trade. Confidence in the near and distant future required healthy tradiug conditions in this eountry.