TAXATION POLICY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 213, 3 May 1932, Page 5

TAXATION POLICY

(Press Assn.—

attacked by labour MR. HOLLAND CLAIMS RELIEF AFFORDED WRONG PEOPLE ONLY WEALTHY BENEFIT

-By Telegraph — Copj.rIght.)

WELLINGTON, Monday. Speaking at Lower Hutt this evening, Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, attacked the Government's latest pronouncement in connection with its taxation policy. When salary and wage reductions and the flat-rate wages tax were protested against, he said, working men were told that the taxpayers with high incomes would have to contribute their quota toward meeting the national liabilities. In order to keep the deficit in the current year down to £2,000,(T00, the Government would have to save over £4,000,000 in expenditure and raise over £2,000,000 i:i additional taxation. Now it was announced that £2,300,000 was to be borrowed from the banks on the se~ curity of the reserves locked up in the soldier settlement lands and no further taxes were to he imposed this year. The Labour Party, said Mr. Hol„ land, had repeatedly protested that the country could not continue ro in-

crease taxation ^without strengthening the source from which the taxes were drawn. They had always eondemned the Government's policy of burning the candle at both ends by reducing the incomes of the people and increasing the taxes on what remained. The Governmenet was now giving the wealthy taxpayers im^ munity from further taxation. Loan for This Purpose The new loan from the banks was solely for this purpose and not to facilitate reductions of expenditure or to reduce the increasing debt. It meant blowing out the candle at the wrong end. Interest on the new loan would be an additional charge on the Consolidated Fund, he said, and in a year's time they would possibly find the Government telling them that in order to balance the Budget, further ■ salary and wage reductions would have to be made. The rank and file of the people would feel that they had been made the victims of a political confidence trick in this connection. If taxes were to be imposed, they should fall in the first instance on the incomes of the wealthy. For a numher of years, said Mr. Holland, Labour had qonsistently argued that the way out of the difficulty was not by increasing taxation, but by utilising the people's credit. Hypothecation of soldier settlement securities was equivalent to a very modified use of the people's credit and in this case, it had been used for the relief of the monied class who did not need relief. A better way would be to utilise the whole of the public credit in a Dominion-wide effort toward reconstruction and rehabilitation.