WINNINGS OF PUNTERS

Hokitika Guardian, 18 December 1928, Page 2

WINNINGS OF PUNTERS

SECURING INCOME TAX

(Australian Press Association). (United Service).

SYDNEY, December 6

The outcry against the State Government’s taxation proposals has evoked the question whether the merits of racing as a sport are so pronouned as to entitle the big army of punters to exemption from taxes which every other industry in the country has to bear. Now that the Government is working overtime in an effort to dovisc new means of dragging the pockets of the public, it has been suggested that the winnings of punters, if taxed, would probably yield anything up to .£2-30,000 a year. It looks as simple as shelling peas. If a punter lias, say, £5 to collect after a race, let the bookmaker give him, not the full winnings, but £l" 10s and a receipt for 10s income tax, which the bookmaker would already have paid into the Government coffers, in the form of income tax receipts purchased from the ’treasury. Such a tax, it is suggested, would suffer less from leakage and evasion of payment than most other forms of direct taxation. Since the bookmaker would he merely an agent, so to -speak, for collecting the tax, he would have 110 temptation to conspire with the punter to dodge the “slug.” What is more, no one could protest that 11010 was another iniquitous form of compulsory taxation, since it would lie an easy matter to refrain from hacking winners if one desired exemption from this impost.