WAR TAXES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 December 1939, Page 8

WAR TAXES

POSITION IN BRITAIN & GERMANY. COMPARATIVE STATISTICS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. December 16. The weekly journal, "The Economist, ’’ reproduces with comment figures from an interesting analysis of comparative taxation in some of the principal countries of the world published by the National Industries Conference Board of New York. In the present circumstances attention naturally focuses on the positions in Britain and Germany respectively. The figures show that while taxation a head of population has risen in Britain from 25.8 dollars before the Great War to 107.8 dollars in 1938, in Germany the burden has increased from 14.3 dollars to 109.7 in the same period. While the rate in British taxation must be considered in relation to the interest payments of the vast national debt incurred in the Great War. similar consideration does not apply in the case of Germany, whose pre-war and war time internal indebtedness was practically extinguished in the inflation. This fact is reflected in the figures for the national indebtedness per head of population in 1928 —Britain, 10,014.6 dollars; Germany, 192 dollars. Even more significant are the figures of taxation taken as a percentage of the national income. For the United Kingdom before the Great War the percentage was ILL and this had in-' creased by 19938 to 21.7. But in Germany. where in 1913 the percentage was only 8.9, the Nazi war preparations had carried it by 1938 to 26.2. The Industrial Conference Board's analysis indicates that the per capita taxation and the proportion of national income taken in taxation are highest in Germany. Moreover, as "The Economist” points out. "these figures' do not show the actual proportion o' national income appropriated by the Government, for they do not allow for borrowing, which was also probably highest per head of the population in Germany last, year."