AS LABOUR SEES IT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 332, 18 April 1928, Page 13

AS LABOUR SEES IT

TAXATION ASSESSMENT MR. j. A. LEE’S CAMPAIGN Taxation as it had been, as it is, and as he considered it should be, was dealt with by Mr. John A. Lee, M.P. for Auckland East, in an address to a Parnell audience last evening. He advanced Labour's viewpoint on income tax and company tax, and condemned the Government policy of assessment. In speaking of the claim of the Hon. Downie Stewart, made in Dunedin recently, that New Zealand was the most lightly-taxed country in the world, Mr. Lee said that that was only - true in part. New Zealand was the most lightly taxed. for the very wealthy people and one of the most heavily taxed for the less wealthy. The company tax which had been repealed in Great Britain by a Labour Chancellor, Mr. Phillip Snowden, was levied in such a way in New Zealand that people of very small incomes were compelled to pay a very heavy tax. Companies paid a maximum of 4s 6d in the pound on large incomes, and the small investor in a large company, even if he only received £IOO fro:<r that company, and that the whole of his income, was compelled to pay the 4s Gd in the pound before he received his share of the profits. One investor might get £IO,OOO a year and another only £SO, and yet all the dividends would be paying the maximum rate. This was a glaring anomaly that should be removed. The tax should be imposed on the recipient, not on the company, and then the wealthy would pay a larger tax and the smaller investor less.

Last session the Minister had set out to remove anomalies, but ail he had achieved was to increase the tax on the £I,OOO man without adding one penny to the £IO,OOO man’s tax —a most unfair action. If the Minister desired to remove anomalies, let him remove the anomaly of compelling the £SO and the £IO,OOO shareholder to pay at the same rate tax, suggested Mr. Lee. Let him put into operation this recommendation of the Taxation Commission. Let recipients pay according to their income, not according to the nature of their investment. ' The company, too, was more likely than the individual to use a share of its profits for industrial expansion, and that was additional reason for the removal of the anomaly.

Mr. Lee also condemned the Government for its immigration policy and quoted extensively from what he called a misleading leaflet which had been issued in Great Britain by the Publicity Department, and which on one page suggested that the average wage was £7 10s, free of income tax. Increased State Advance charges and the bank rate also came in for a considerable measure of criticism, as did also the fact that four years of ‘"Coates and Confidence” had resulted in 13,581 employees being driven off the lands in Nev/ Zealand and over 200,000 acres reverting to barren and unproductive land. In the concluding portions of his address Mr. Lee referred humorously to the “Coates and Confidence” advertisements issued at last election.