Taxation Has Dead Hand On Industry

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 43, 13 May 1927, Page 11

Taxation Has Dead Hand On Industry

CHANCELLOR REGRETFUL GERMAN TRADE REVIVAL By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright LONDON, Thursday. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Churchill, spoke at the annual dinner of the_ British Bankers’ Association. He said: “I would have felt happier with twopence on the income tax to produce just a few extra millions and make the Chancellorship comfortable. However, I thought it would be more manly to procure the money to meet the extra expenditure on the Shanghai Defence Force out of economies, and by so doing to make possible a renewed attempt at economy in 1928.

‘T realise that taxation on its present level impedes the creation of new wealth. It resembles a dead hand upon the industries of the nation. “The general strike put back the prospects of debt conversion 18 months.”

Alluding to the British Note to Mr. A. W. Mellon, United States Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Churchill said: “That gentleman’s reputation as a world statesman and financier is so high that it was absolutely necessarv for the British Government to issue a correction of the mis-statements into which he had been inadvertently led. We owed this to our European debtors and to our own public opinion.” The Chancellor referred in vigorous terms to the rebirth of German competition as a great scientific organisation, which, by an involuntary act of repudiation, had freed itself from the majority of its debts. This competition, he said, would impinge on the world’s markets. It was only by setting her house in order that Britain could make headway against these complications.—A. and N.Z.