A FINANCE BILL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1943, Page 3

A FINANCE BILL

TAXATION MATTERS.

CLARIFYING LEGISLATION. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A Finance Bill consisting of two clauses was introduced in the House last night and read a first time. The Minister in charge of the Land and Income Tax Department. Mr Nordmeyer, said the first clause dealt with the provision made last year for deductions from the incomes of rabbit- ! ers and others in respect of social se- . curity payments. The clause was designed to clarify the position. The other clause dealt with the exemption from taxation that existed in respect of subsidies paid by employers to employees on active service. The existing law had been challenged in lhe Court and upset the interpretation previously placed, on it. The Bill would do what was intended in the legislation passed in 1939. If the Bill did not go through, the taxation department vzould have to tax employers on the amounts they were contributing to their employees on active service and the State would stand to gain more revenue through the law as it now stood. The Bill provided that in calculating the assessable income of any employer the Commissioner of Taxes might allow as a deduction any moneys paid by that employer to any serving employee when he was satisfied that the payments had been made for the purpose of supplementing the income of the serving employee. No deduction would be allowed in excess of the rates of wages or salary and allowances paid the employee at the time he was called up or in excess of £4 a week. The assessable income of any serving employee would be deemed to include all moneys paid to him by his employ- 1 er, and all such moneys would be deemed to be earned income. For the purposes of the Social Security Act, 1938, all such moneys paid to serving employees would be deemed to be salary or wages. The payment of moneys by an employer to an employee would not be deemed a gift within the meaning of the Death Duties Act, 1921.