THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service.” WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943 HOSPITAL TAXATION

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3296, 4 August 1943, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY. “Public Service.” WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943 HOSPITAL TAXATION

Whatever may be said about the merits or otherwise of this or that alternative scheme of taxation for hospitals, the growing volume of opinion against the existing system of unfairly taxing a section of the public for the benefit of the whole makes the adoption of some more equitable alternative imperative and inevitable. The New Zealand Counties’ Association in conference stressed this urgent requirement by adopting an alternative for spreading the burden over the whole community. This is a matter for Government policy and appropriate legislation. The Government has been compelled by the persistence and increasing strength of the agitation against the present system to make a partial acknowledgment of the justice of the claims made by those unfairly burdened under it. Having so far conceded the principle it should go further, and abolish completely a system of taxation that however justifiable it may have been in the past, is to-day an anomaly and an anachronism.