WAR PROFITS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 April 1942, Page 3

WAR PROFITS

RESTRICTION PLANS IN U.S.A. SALES TAX OPPOSED BY PRESIDENT. ' : IN SPITE OF GREAT NEED OF REVENUE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 7. The Senate unanimously passed a 19,062,000,000-dollar War Appropriation Bill containing a modified compromise measure for limiting war profits. The compromise provision, which gives the Government authority to renegotiate contracts which might yield unreasonable profits, was advanced by the Administration leader's order to avoid the passage of the flat six per cent limit previously voted by the House of Representatives. Profit restriction faces further modification by the Joint House and Senate Committee that will meet in an attempt to adjust the many differences between the two Chambers over the huge war time fund Bill. The Bill carries funds for 30,000 aeroplanes and equipment for the army of 3,600,000, which is expected to be in the field by the end of the year. President Roosevelt at his Press conference re-emphasised his opposition to the Federal sales tax. The subject came up when an interviewer remarked that the income tax on the 10,000dollar a year salary of a member of Congress would be practically doubled under the Treasury’s proposals for greatly increased individual income rates. Mr Roosevelt said he had not known what the figures were. He was then asked if he had figured cut his own tax next year under the Treasury proposal. He replied, smiling, that he had not, since the tax he paid this year under the present tax rates was bad enough. Asked if this statement inclined him toward the sales tax, he replied, “No, despite the personal hardship.” Though the Federal sales tax is opposed by Mr Roosevelt and Treasury officials, influential members of Congress have stated that the goal of 7,500,000,000 dollars in new war revenues cannot be achieved without it. Representatives of both the Congress of Industrial Organisations and the American Federation of Labour have publicly opposed the imposition’of the sales tax.

LABOUR PROPOSAL LEGAL. LIMIT ON INCOMES. OVERTIME PAYMENT IN WAR BONDS. NEW YORK, April 7. The executive board of United Automobile Workers (C. 1.0. proposed in Detroit today that the legal limit of 25,000 dollars a year be placed on family and individual incomes for the duration of the war, in return for which fhe workers would accept nonnegotiable war bonds in lieu of all overtime pay over 40 hours a week. The board presented these proposals, in what it termed an equality of sacrifice programme to a special war conference of unions. Other parts of the programme included rigid price-fixing of all necessities, limitation on war production profits to 3 pei' cent on the capital in- " vestment, rationing of all food, cloth®«w! ing, housing and other necessities, and wage increases to bring real wages to the 1941 levels. A special war conference of the union unanimously approved the programme after a boisterous session throughout the day, in the course of which rank and file leaders of the U.A.W. repeatedly voiced their reluctance to waive the premium pay for weekend and holiday work till the employers are compelled to make equal sacri ficGs. The president of the U.A.W., Mr R. J. Thomas, and other union leaders, who are frankly fearful of the mounting anti-labour sentiment in Congress, warned the delegates that the whole question of maintaining the 40-hour week hinged on the U.A.W.’s acceptance of a direct request made by President Roosevelt for suspension of « the double-time wage payments.