CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 August 1917, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

TAXING MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISES.

Another anomaly of taxation is the exemption of municipal enterprise?. There is no good reason for such exemption. If a municipal enterprise makes 11 profit it eventually benefits the ratepayers just as imicli as if these people made more money h.V their ov.-n personal exertions, in which case they would be called on to pay more inconi" tax. Besides, these enterprises are in competition with private concerns, which have to pay income tax. The manager of the Auckland (las Company stated the other day before tin* Arbitration Court that his company paid nearly £10,01)0 in taxes this year. Next year, under the new Budget stale, the taxes 'will be very much more. Yet the company is competing against a municipal electric enterprise which pays no such taxation. Municipal concerns are taxed by the State in Britain; the table showing the incidence of the income tax in 1911-1?. gives the number of assessments on local authorities as 12,<587, and the gross income! assessed as .C25.3--15.'<):M. ' Municipal trading is being extended in New Zealand, and this anomaly should be rc~ moved'at once. A trading munu'ipality should pay its way fully, like any other concern, and not compete against private enterprise with.what is virtually a subsidy from the State.—-Auckland'Star.

J CONSCRIPTION OF BOYS. I Politicians invariably look for tho line [of least resistance, and the most recent proposal for the compulsory enlistment of boys of 19 for service abroad is just what might have been expected from the so-called National Oovermuent. It is not that our administrators' really believe it is a good thing to send boys into the firing line. They have recently set their faces against the practice and so great was the protest from military headquarters at the front some time back at the number* of immature adolescents who were finding their way into the forces (and incidentally, of course, into tho hospitals), that Sir .lames Allen liictually threatened under-age recruits with prosecution for supplying false information as to their ages! Why. then, has the Government turned lound.on its tracks'/ It ia, in our opinion, because they have been mot by the ••demands" of a politically organised Second Division of undoubted voting capacity.' The demands of the military have already used up a considerable proportion of our boy power, but Ministers are not content to let it stay at that. They have altered the slogan. It is to be "the last boy and the last shilling" from now onwards unless Parliament intervenes and makes boy soldiery a test question, when, of course, tho Ministry •will twist round ami proclaim that there was never any serious intention of bringing down a proposal of the kind.—Manawatu Times.