STOCK VALUATION

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21223, 20 September 1940, Page 4

STOCK VALUATION

EFFECT OF AMENDMENTS EXTRA LOAD IN TAXATION SYSTEM ROUNDLY CONDEMNED (By Telegraph.—Special to Time#) AUCKLAND, Friday Characterised by a speaker as a capital levy on farming, the recent amendment governing the valuation of stock in social security and income tax returns came in for scathing criticism at the monthly meeting of the Auckland Provincial Executive of the New Zealand Farmers’ Union. It was stated that farmers were required to show stock held as at March 31, 1940, at approximately market value, and that where this exceeded, as it would in most cases, the standard conservative values used from year to year, taxation at Is 9d in the £ was payable on the difference between these values and the values shown 12 months previously. This meant that if a farmer valued 1000 sheep at 10s each as at April 1, 1939, and his stock remained the same in number as at March 31, 1940, and he was then required to assess them at 19s —a figure that had been officially mentioned—he would be compelled to pay taxation on the difference in value, £450, at Is 9d in the £. He would thus be called upon to pay an extra amount of £39 7s 6d in taxation. , Load On Sheep Industry This form of taxation was described as a means of extorting money from the section of the com-

munity that had been hardest hit by rising costs, and was working longer hours in the nation’s interest than any other section. It was pointed out that if the average increase in valuation insisted on by the Commissioner of Taxes over our 31,000,000 sheep amounted to 5s a sheep, the extra tax loaded on to the industry on this basis would amount to no less than £678,125. The executive felt the action of the Commissioner of Taxes to be so unfair that immediate publicity should be given to the effects of an enactment at present unknown to most farmers. Comment was made that from the first levying of the unemployment taxation farmers were told to value their stock at a nominal figure, so long as the valuation used was kept constant from year to year.