PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.8
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ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
18 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
Fourteenth Day.
9 May 1907.
DOUBLE INCOME TAX.
114
Sir WILLIAM LYNE: Do I understand that the practice is that supposing a company is registered in another part of the world with persons living here, deriving income from that company, you tax that income?
Mr. ASQUITH: If they live here.
Sir JOSEPH WARD: We all do the same. What we want to try to get is a mutual arrangement that one shall abandon the imposition at one end and the other at the other. We all do the same absolutely.
Sir WILLIAM LYNE: Then I think we ought to put on an overtax. The British Government stopped me when I wanted to do something of the kind once.
The
Sir JOSEPH WARD: If there is a shareholder in a British Company carrying on operations here entirely, and he is living in New Zealand and gets his income out from England to New Zealand, we tax it there. very same is done by the British Government when a New Zealander is living in England.
Mr. ASQUITHI: The whole thing is set out in the discussion we had the other day. The considerations on one side and the other are stated with perfect lucidity, and I think it would be a pity to have to go over the ground again.
CHAIRMAN: This resolution will be on record, and the proceedings at the Treasury are recorded, which show that the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot agree.
Dr. SMARTT: I understand Mr. Deakin, Sir Joseph Ward and General Botha have accepted the principles laid down in the resolution already. That is why I would like to have it on record at the Conference that they have accepted it.
Sir JOSEPH WARD: If the resolution goes on record with the record of the proceedings of the Committee and the views of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think it is just as good as a resolution passed one way or the other.
Dr. SMARTT: It is unfortunate that Mr. Moor did not happen to be present at the meeting we had. I know he agrees with the tenour of the resolution, and I thought if we could have got it affirmed here, Mr. Moor, who was not present at the discussion, would be able to vote upon it.
Mr. ASQUITHI: No doubt all the representatives of South Africa would agree.
Mr. F. R. MOOR: We have no income tax in our Colony, but that does not justify the double tax, in my opinion.
Mr. ASQUITH: They have in Cape Colony.
115
SILVER COINAGE.
Fourteenth Day.
9 May 1907.
Mr. DEAKIN: The papers for which I have sent and my analysis SILVER COINAGE.
of the return you have been kind enough to supply, have not reached me. The general opinion with us that the profit on silver coinage is large, is borne out by the return. The net result of the operations of the Mint must be most satisfactory.
Mr. ASQUITH; They vary very much from year to year. We had a very good year last year as it happens.
Mr. DEAKIN: The price of silver was low.
Mr. ASQUITH: The price of silver is one factor, but the demand is of a very capricious kind, particularly from West Africa. A large part of our profit is due to an abnormal demand from West Africa, where the natives like fresh bright silver and keep it.
Mr. DEAKIN: Apart from that, so far as I follow this return, the profits made on Australian coinage alone look extremely well-over 40,000l. a
year.
Mr. ASQUITII: That is not far wrong. I will tell you exactly how I take the profit in Australia. The average amount taking five years silver coinage applied to Australia is 76,4801. per annum. The mint profit on that, if all the coins had been made out of new bullion, would be 41,4617., but we have to deduct from that the worn silver and on the average that was withdrawn from Australia to the value of 11,7067. per annum, so that the net supply of new coins was 76,4807. minus this 11,706., which would give you 64,7741. a year, on which the profit would be 35,115. Then if you deduct the loss of the worn coin from that, as I think you ought fairly to do, because there is considerable loss on this worn silver-we average it at about 10 per cont. of the face value of the coin-if we take that 11,7061. which is the average annual amount withdrawn of worn coin from Australia, 10 per cent. of that is 1,1707. The net annual profit attributable to Australia 35,1151. less 1,170. equals 33,9451. That is the best sum I can give you. That has been worked out as fairly as it can be. That may be said to have been the average profit of the Mint during the five years from the Australian issues.
Mr. DEAKIN: Have you any proposition to make for future coinage?
Mr. ASQUITHI: Would you like to coin yourselves, because we can offer you that?
Mr. DEAKIN: That has been proposed.
Mr. ASQUITH: We are quite ready to give it up and let you coin yourselves, just as Canada does.
Mr. DEAKIN: Canada has a subsidiary coinage.
Mr. ASQUITH: Yes, and yours would be a local coinage.
Mr. DEAKIN: Yes, distinguished in some trifling way.