HEROISM IN HIGH PLACES

Hokitika Guardian, 17 November 1931, Page 6

HEROISM IN HIGH PLACES

(Gh ri stch i irch Times)

We gather from unofficial sources that certain citizens are now receiving their income-tax assessments and tliat they are not at. all pleased with the arithmetic of the Department. The main grievance, we gather, is that the taxes alp levied on income received last year and long since spent and that the levy will have to be, paid our of a greatly diminished income this year.

It is perhaps unnecessary fo point out that the object of the Department in sending out these assessments it not to give pleasure to citizens. That is the function of the Tourist Department and the Censor of Films, and perhaps of the hew. Broadcasting Department, though we are afraid that that Department may also give a lot of pain. The function of the Income Tax Department is analogous to that .of a surgeon, whose duty, and ’privilege, it is to open the patient’s vein in ' order to’ relieve the pressure. The difference is that the surgeon always says he is sure that the patient will be all the better for it afterward®, but the Department seems to have a very poor bedside manner.

The point- that we set out to make, however, has nothing to do with the Department, though it concerns the patient as a voter. It seems to ns that we could not have' been given better proof of the good faith, earnestness and entire forgetfulness, of .self of the Coalition Government than this fact that within three weeks of a general election is has permitted these assessment notices to go out to the public. There is not even an apology or an expression ■of The Government evidently wants the public to realise that it is moved by the sternest sense of . duty, that it is facing fits unpleasant task with conspicuous heroism and that it expects the people of the Dominion to do likewise. We may add that from what we have heard of the assessments we can almost guess why the Prime Minister wanted to get rid of the portfolio of finance.