DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 72, 16 June 1927, Page 18

DR. FRANK CRANE'S DAILY EDITORIAL

CONFISCATION (Vopynghtj 1927 J A MAN is supposed to have a right to his property. When he owns a thing he is supposed to have control of it and enjoy the usufruct of it. The United States is prepared to go to war to enforce this grand and glorious principle upon foreign nations. . This sounds very pretty, but the United States iS not going into this business with clean hands. It is confiscating property and robbing its own citizens at home and furnishing them no reasonable compensation. Suits have recently been instigated against Henry Ford apd Charlie Chaplin and goodness knows how many other people for taxes running way back to 1919 or so. These people made returns at the time upon their property that was taxable and swore to them. The returns were accepted by the Government and now four or five years after the whole thing is over the Government comes along and says that these gentlemen did not adhere to the truth in their statements. The income tax system is a tremendous obstacle in the way of prosperity. It was conceived on the Robin Hood theory of government, a theory as old as Alexander the Great, and that theory is that government being all powerful should pounce upon rich men and take away their property under any pretext. A change has come over the mode of thought in modern times and rich men are considered as being a benefit to the country and not a drawback. They are not rich because they rob the poor, but rich because they help everybody else to become rich.

Mr. Ford never robbed anybody. He gives employment to. thousands of people super wages. He is the kind of man that has put America in the front in the economic world.

In England he w r ould be created a knight and in France he would get the legion of honour. In this country the bolsheviks in Congress want to soak him over the head when they get a chance.

. Charlie Chaplin has furnished amusement to millions of people. For this he has been paid as he should have been. The Government, however, saw' a good chance to take a slice of his profits and proceeded to do so. Five years after date the Government can come along and some 40.00 dollar a month clerk can say that whereas during that year you paid 2,000 dollars for a secretary, you ought to have paid but 1,000 dollars. Consequently you are a liar and a horse thief and the Government will tax you. It also says that when you travel in the course of business and take a steamer costing 1,000 dollars it was too much and you should have paid but 500 dollars.

You are not allowed to spend your money as you please and incur such expenses in transacting your business as may seem proper, but it is all subject to supervision by some man you wouldn’t pay the wages of an ordinary clerk. It is all a process of penalising thrift. Those w'ho by their industry, economy and enterprise accumulate a little money must be robbed for the benefit of those who are too shiftless to lay anything by. The high income tax business is a species of governmental appropriation without compensation and has no foundation in justice. A simple sales tax levied equally upon all sales would accomplish the same purpose, laying the burden equally upon all people and not be oppressive. But such a tax would not suit the grouch of those people who regard other men with more money than themselves as a criminal. As a w r ar measure the income tax may have had some excuse. Everything goes in war. But in time of peace it has no excuse.