CO129-615-2 Income tax 10-3-1947 - 6-2-1948 — Page 72

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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL

my Hon. Friend Dr. S. N. Chau has so ably advocated, the method of a lottery, a method which has also been discussed by my Hon. Friend Mr. Watson; and many other methods have been fully dis- cussed both outside this Council and in the press, and in the course of this debate. It is not necessary for me to go through them in detail, because my Hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has dealt very comprehensively with these various suggestions and with the intrinsic merits as well as the relative superiority of the form of direct taxation which this Council is now considering. After much consideration of this question, after studying the numerous proposals which have been put forward and after hearing both the Financial Secretary's and other members of this Council's expositions of their views on this matter, I am left, and I trust this Council is left, with the conviction that the method which we are considering in this Bill is the fairest and the most appropriate expedient which could have been brought before this Council at the present time for establishing our financial structure on a proper basis and for meeting the needs of this Colony.

The third question, the question whether it is really workable, has been dealt with by my Hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary. He has made it very clear that the Government is fully alive to the many difficulties and that it does expect to be able satisfactorily to surmount them, not shutting our eyes on the one hand to the possibilities of evasion, nor on the other hand making undue inquisition or effecting undue disturbance of existing habits and methods.

Finally I come to the question of the timing of this measure. The suggestion that this Bill, though in itself not unreasonable, and perhaps even necessary, is at the present juncture inopportune and premature this suggestion has been put forward on two grounds. The Honourable Mr. Landale reminded us in his speech of one of them. Some five weeks ago, when the proposals of Government were under examination by the Taxation Committee, enlarged by the addition of all the unofficial members of this Council, the view was expressed that the Bill, as it then stood, needed very careful expert examination, and that this would necessarily take so long that it would be impossible, if the examination were properly done, for it to be completed in time for the tax to come into operation in 1947-48. The Government concurred in the need for thorough and expert examination and, as the Council knows, that examination and the consequent amendment of this Bill were completed before the Bill was read a first time a week ago. I have already expressed our debt of obligation which we owe to the Committee which undertook this important and difficult task. Its work was done with remarkable thoroughness as well as with remarkable expedition, and its result has been, in my judgment, completely to dispose of the first reason for which it has been suggested that the whole matter ought to be deferred for a whole year.

The other grounds for deferment which have been put forward, both in the course of this debate and outside this Council, are these: We are on the eve of constitutional changes; a Municipality is to be

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