DAY’S WORK FOR NOTHING.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9079, 21 February 1908, Page 2

DAY’S WORK FOR NOTHING.

Does it ever occur to people that leap year may, and generally does, touch their pockets appreciably? asks the Daily Mail. Those wage earners who are paid every Friday or Saturday suffer nothing, because they are paid for the“extra day they have to live during the year. But those in receipt of monthly or quarterly cheques for salary are different, for they lose the payment for the extra day’s work. Employers are naturally forgetful of such little matters, and employees are not so long-sighted as they might be if we may judge from the fact that when engagements are entered into and contracts made for a term of year* no account is taken of that extra day in leap year. A simple calculation shows that & person earning £IO3O a year paid monthly, quarterly, or annually, finds himself out of pocket to the extent of £2 15s as the result of leap year, and, of course, the larger the income, the greater the loss. The Chancellor of the Exchequer dealing with millions of the nation’s money, is not slow to appreciate the importance of leap year. Taking last year’s Budget figures as a hasis, the extra day would mean an increase of some £397,000 in gross revenue, and of course £382,000 in expenditure. Interesting, too, is it to figure out what leap year means in regard to our foreign trade. Taking again the figures of our last financial year, it will he fonnd that one day’s extra imports amount to the huge sum of £i 544,000 and one day’s extra export .to’fil 203,000. Thus from the mere fact of its being leap year our total foreign trade ought to have two and three - quarter millions sterling -greater this year than last.