HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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I will conclude, as I began, with an assurance that the responsible elements of the Chinese community are prepared to assist in every way they can in finding a solution to the urgent and special financial problems with which the Colony is faced.
Numerous methods of raising revenue alternative to Income Tax have already been suggested, and in their consideration the Chinese business community desires to be not critical but constructive. No scheme will be attacked only on the ground that it inflicts hardship or strain on any portion of the community. But the opposition to the institution of anything in the nature of a tax on income or profits, which I now have formally to record, arises mainly from the firm conviction that the disturbing effect of its introduction and the confusion attendant on its administration will, by doing incalculable harm to business interests, defeat the object which it is obviously the desire of the Government to attain. (Applause).
HON. MR. LO MAN-KAM.-Your Excellency,-My Honourable friend, the Financial Secretary, in his illuminating "Memorandum on the Financial Position 1938, 1939 and the Estimates for 1940-1941", to which I shall have occasion to refer again, remarks:-
"As last year, the revenue for 1940-1941 has been estimated generally on the assumption that the economic activity of the Colony will be maintained at not far short of its present level. This may prove to be over optimistic, especially since the outbreak of the war, but the whole outlook is at present so uncer- tain that no other firm basis for estimating the revenue presents itself."
With the inevitable dislocations of trade caused by the war, and by the various measures dictated by Imperial war economy, and with new taxation under the proposed War Budget, I confess to a strong feeling that the Financial Secretary's fear that the assumption on which the revenue position is based may be over optimistic will, unhappily, prove only too true. I wish, therefore, to state that, in assenting, as a member of the Select Committee, to the Budget now before the Council, I have paid due regard to the Financial Secretary's statement in this Council on the 12th October, 1939 that the programme of Public Works Extraordinary and also the many items of special expenditure appearing in the individual Heads of Estimates, although approved by this Council and the Secretary of State, would not be automatically carried out if the revenue position did not justify the expenditure.
The above, Sir, is all that I have to say on the General Budget, except to renew a plea which has already been made by me in the last two successive Budget Debates in this Council. The plea, Sir, is that Government may be kind enough to make a substantial grant for providing charitable and medical relief to the Chinese on account of the Sino-Japanese conflict.
As I have previously pointed out, such relief is in a humanitarian cause which transcends any consideration of mere "profit and loss".
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