DUTY ON FILM.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5182, 23 September 1927, Page 1

DUTY ON FILM.

PROPOSED INCREASE CRITICISED.

“PUBLIC WILL PAY IN LONG RUN.”

Estimating that the proposed 200 per cent, increase in duty upon imported kinematograph film amounted to an extra tax of at least 20 per cent, on the gross revenue of the distributing companies, which passed on, would represent a huge increase in the operating costs of all theatres, Mr J. Robertson, secretary of the New Zealand Motion Picture Owners’ Association, declared at Wellington last week, that if tariff proposals were enforced, owners would be- given no option but to increase their admission charges, or else go to the wall.

“Considered from any angle you like,” said Mr Robertson, “this proposed increase in duty cannot have the effect of assisting British picture production at the expense of America, or any other foreign country. The American distributing organisations in New Zealand, by clauses in their contracts, and by other me.ans, will pass on the whole cost of this duty to the exhibitors, who, in turn, will pass th§ burden on to the public. The American producer, in no case, pays ; it is the New Zealand public who will pay. A FEW COMPARISONS. “ If the New Zealand exhibitor was in a position where he could refuse to take American film because of its high cost owing to duty, and could take British film instead, something could be said in favour of the proposed tax. If he was in the position of one of the general public whose choice, was the buying of a Britishmade hat, or an American, and who knew that he was getting better value in the British article because it was paying the lower duty, it might, have the designed effect of preferential duty. With pictures, however, another element comes in, and that isi. the entertainment value of the picture which has no relation to the amount of duty. That is to say, the, exhibitor might have to take a British picture if it were available-, which might have no entertainment value as compared with a foreign-made picture, but because the British picture, was cheaper to buy on ad-count of it not having duty to pay, it would not help him, if it did not draw the public to his theatre.

“The duty is not levied on the entertainment value of a picture. It is simply levied at so much pen’ foot of celluloid film. One picture of 8000 fee in length may have an entertainment value of £ s. d. of. say, £2OOO, and another of equal length £2OO, but the same, duty is levied in each case. NEW ZEALAND’S REQUIREMENTS. “It is a fact,” continued Mt Robertson, “that every British picture with an entertainment value has , been bought for New Zealand up to the present. There are in New Zealand a number of companies who buy on the world’s markets and two of them deal exclusively in British pictures. There’ are not made in Britain in a year, good and Usd together, enough pictures to keep even one theatre in a New Zealand city going with a regular weekly supply. •' The requirements for New Zealand are roughly 500 feature pictures per annum. If eve,ry picture made in Britain came to New Zealand and passed, the censor only 10 per cent, of the country’s requirements would be m«ejt. Proof of this can be found in ’ the fact that the highest quota considered by the Imperial Government: as possible for England herself is 7% per cent., and this quota will not come into operation until 1929. Ta-day in New Zealand we are actually using a higher percentage of British film than they are actually using in England. Every English news-reel comes to New Zealand, and one of the main difficulties in assembling a programme for general purposes is that no British companies exist in England making comedies or shpr't-length entertainment reels, it is therefore very obvious that if the Government has all this information mt its disposal thej impost is not being 'considered as a means of promoting the showing of British film or of assisting British film production.”

DUTY IN ENGLAND. The duty in. Australia and Canada, he mentioned, was l%d a foot,/and in a great number of the colonies there was no duty. In England the negative only,, from which any num.ber of copies .might be taken, was taxed. This meant, said Mr Robertson, that in comparison with the proposed New Zeailand duty the English duty upon individual prints amounted to a small fraction of a penny per foot. A grave danger of the proposals was the possibility of the curtailment of supplies, thus reducing the area of choice now open to the exhibitoi and enabling the distributors, in effect, to compel thej exhibitor to take whatever was available in order to keep his theatre open.

If it w.ms taken into account that the number of admissions weekly to picture ’theatres in New Zealand approximated one-half of the total population, tand further, if thvj proposed increase in duty, which, on the basis of last year’s film importations, would amount to nearly £86,000 annually, had to be borne by the picture-goers of New Zealand, then the Ministers claim to have lightened tliei brarden of Customs taxation by £330,0100 wa» seriousfy impugned. “NO LOGICAL REASON?” “The New Zealand picture theatre owner ” said Mt Robertson in conclusion, “‘sees no logical reason for the imposition of a dnty which is dotmie the highest imposed in any other Dominion, and which is enormously higher th an that levied in England itself.”