Report
on an Ordinance intituled An Ordinance to provide for the taxation of tobacco.
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44113
REC
400
Pear 14 F16
The object of this ordinance is to provide for the taxa-
tion of tobacco consumed in the Colony.
Duties
It is based on the
Liquors-end-consolidation ordinance, 1911, and on the Straits
Settlements Tobacco/ordinance, 1916. A table of comparison
between the ordinance now reported on and the two Ordinances
mentioned above is annexed to this report. In many cases
the correspondence between the sections is not exact. The
figures in red ink in the second column refer to the sections
of the Opium Ordinance, 1914.
Section 6(1)
may
It is possible that the scale of duties
require some revision when the scale in the ordinance
has been tested by experience. For instance, cigarettes
made of Chinese tobacco will under the scale pay very heavily
in comparison to their value. The fairest tax would perhaps
have been an ad valorem tax but this would have been liable to
produce disputes and would have been difficult to collect with
the present staff and machinery.
It
tection 6(3): In the discussion on the bill in the Legis
lative Council it was objected that the bill was retrospective
in so far as it proposed to tax tobacco already imported.
was pointed out that the tobacco which would be taxed under
this provision had not yet reached the tax payer, i.e. the
consumer, and that the provision was not really retrospective.
There is no question here of enforcing against one person A
debt incurred by another or of placing a burden on persons who
have not received the corresponding benefit. Kuch trouble
was caused and a certain amount of revenue was lost through
the exemption of liquors already imported in the original
Liquors Ordinance.
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