TAXATION PROPOSALS.
iIR. G. V. PEARCE'S VIEWS. (Our Parliamentary- Reporter). Wellington, Last Night. Speaking in the House to-night, Mr. G. V. Pearce (<Fatea) said the country ' should be prepared to find any amount of money required to treat soldiers well. We had not yet provided nearly enough for soldiers' dependents or for the totally incapacitated soldiers. His own opinion was that incapacitated men. should receive at least £2, and that 12s Cd per week should be allowed for every child up to the age of 16 years. He would support taxation sufficient to provide for those people. He had not much faith in nostrums for keeping down the cost of living. Australia had bred many of them, and the result was that the cost of living was higher there than here. He favored the doubling of the taxes, on foreign motor cars, hut not on motor lorries and such vehicles, for most of the motor cars were used for pleasure purposes. Even if the imposition of the tax kept these American cars out of the country it would be no calamity. It would be better for some people if they were not able to buy cars, as they would have more money to invest in war bonds, which would bo more use to them in the bad times after the war. He strongly urged the Minister to impose another H) per cent, on foreign motor cars. The beer duty was not to be increased nearly enough. The added increase would' mean an addition altogether of'so per cent to the old tax im-, posed on beer 38 years ago. At least it' should be increased to double the amount, for such a rich monopoly could well afford to pay it. He went on to speak of the graduated hnd lax. This tax amounted to £4 10s per cent, on the higher graduations, nearly as much' as the land was worth. He did not believe in the proposal not to allow a remission of the amount of mortgage in assessing for graduated tax. It was not right that a man should have to submit to the levying of this tax on his debte. It should be remembered that the amount of registered Mortgages in New Zealand was £120,000,000, While the total unimproved value of the lands' of New Zoa- ■ land was only £23.0,000,000. . The income tax on farmers did not work equitably, and fell wjth special severity on the man who' with his own and Kis' family's labor, for which no allowance could be made, contrived to make a little income. Mr. Pearce added that the Government was taking too much money by means of taxation. He believed that the Minister of Finance,-with a surplus of six millions in hand, had far underestimated the revenue of the current year. The accumulation uf funds' for : transfer to London was going to injure i the Dominion, which should be encouri aging men to go on the land by seeing i tkWfarming was profitable. ■
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19170809.2.20
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1917, Page 4
Word count
Tapeke kupu
499TAXATION PROPOSALS. Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1917, Page 4
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Taranaki Daily News. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.