HIGHER TAXATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1940, Page 9

HIGHER TAXATION

IN PROSPECT IN AUSTRALIA. FEDERAL TREASURER’S FORECAST. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) BRISBANE, November 10. The Federal Treasurer, Mr. A. Fadden, discussing the forthcoming £250,000,000 Budget which is to be introduced in the House of Representatives on November 21, said: “Australians will appreciate the inescapable necessity for meeting record war expenditure.” He emphasised that the Budget will provide no novel forms of taxation, but that there will be increases in existing taxation which might in some quarters be regarded as staggering. However, the Australian taxpayer would find some consolation in the realisation that what he was called upon to pay was not commensurate with what taxpayers in Britain, Canada. and New Zealand were paying. The Prime Minister, Mr. R. G. Menzies, declared in Melbourne that the Government would need to accept responsibility for its own Budget proposals. The Government was quite convinced that excessive use of credit from a central bank imposed the worst form of taxation by devaluing money and thereby imposing a flat-rate tax bearing more heavily upon the wageearner than the well-to-do.