CO129-594-5 Financial Policy Directive 21-2-1945 - 6-10-1945 — Page 4

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This has been held up in the hope that some time or other we would be able to have even an Assistant Financial Officer to deal with it. There seems as yet small likelihood that we shall have a Financial Officer of any grade at all

available to advise the Unit in the immediate future. Therefore, rather than hold up this paper any longer I send it on with the following preliminary observations.

We should in my view preserve as free a hand as possible in this and other long term directives. In total ignorance of the conditions we shall have to face in Hong Kong, and of the pace of later rehabilitation and development (if any), it would seem prudent to confine ourselves to

I would generalizations so far as this is possible. be reluctant to say for example, that "all revenue from the date of reoccupation should be collected in accordance with the legislation in force at the date of the enemy occupation". See paragraph 2 of draft. I would much rather have our intentions as regards this paragraph of the draft on record something as follows:-

"In general, as and when conditions, permit, revenue will be collected in accordance with the

In legislation in force on December 24th 1941. due course consideration will be given to the introduction of a general income tax"

and then omit paragraph 6 of the draft, the provisions of which this general statement covers.

Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the draft should I

think be amalgamated as suggested.

I am not sure that the opening paragraph of the draft serves any useful purpose. I should like to see it also omitted.

(Mr.Hazelrigg, our Legal Adviser, who has had long experience in the Colony, has suggested to me that the position after the strike and boycott in 1926, bad as it was, will be childs play compared with what we shall have to meet on reoccupation. He sees the property owner, who was one of the main- stays of the revenue, as more likely to be a beggar at Government's door than a contributor to revenue. In general I am inclined to agree.)

пилм

Miss Puuston Ma Band

As to Bankin with Policy

femorally

18.5.45.

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