ABOLITION OF GOLD DUTY.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 468, 3 May 1890, Page 2

ABOLITION OF GOLD DUTY.

The following is a copy-of a petition which has been drawn up by Mr Edward Kersey Cooper, for presentation to the House of Representatives at the next session of Parliament. It will (says the Thames Star) be. bound in book form, and it iu Mr Cooper’s intention to obtain the signatures of all interested in the abolition of the duty in the various mining centres throughout this peninsula 1. That by an Act of your honourable House, iutituled the Customs Duties Consolidation Act, 1892, in Seotion 4 a duty of two shillings per ounce is imposed upon all gold of the fineness of twenty carat and upwards previous to exportation from the said colony. 2 That suoh duty is invariably oharged and deducted by all banking institutions at the time they purchase the gold from the miner, and is therefore paid by the miner. . 3. That such duty is consequently a direct tax upon industry. 4. That the difficulties of paying such duty upon small quantities of gold tends to create a monopoly of purchase by banking institutions which happen to be represented at the mining centres, who combine and fiss«fflTpon a basie of purchase to be adnered. to by the banks of the different districts.

5, That suoh duty was first imposed when rich alluvial and quartz depots were thft