“VICTIM” OF INCOME TAX

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 271, 6 February 1928, Page 10

“VICTIM” OF INCOME TAX

GAS COMPANY’S PROTEST “GOVERNMENT—A LAW UNTO ITSELF” Spurred by the “victimisation” of the Auckland Gas Company by the income tax regulations, Mr. J. H. Upton, chairman of directors, painted a picture to-day of taxation reduced to absurdity. Addressing the shareholders, he said: ‘T must again ask the attention of shareholders to the inequitable incidence of the income tax whereby our very active rivals, the Auckland Electric Power Board, are exempted while we pay £17,500. "It is that hateful thing, a differential tax, only found in half civilised countries. Royal and Parliamentary commissions, the considered opinions of chambers of commerce all over the Dominion, and now, last and most significant of all, the Economic Conference of the League of Nations at Geneva, have in no uncertain tones upheld the principle that all industry, whether carried on by private persons or by any Government, general or municipal, should be taxed on the same basis of equality. “But our Government is superior to all that, and is a law unto itself; and no redress is made. Consider what would happen were the Government to extend its operations a little further, for our industry is by no means the only victim even now and undertake the whole business of the country, the banking, brewing, printing, shipping, building, merchanting, etc., of our daily life, and apply the same method of exemption as is now applied to municipal and Government trading where would the public revenue come from ? “Ail business would be exempt and tnen the necessary revenue would have to be found by lawyers, agents and tnrc he / S ° f all sorts » doctors and editors of newspapers, by the professional l 1? fact \ aided b y an y unfortunate old people who, under happier d S ag?? SaVed * f6W P ° Unds