INCOME TAX AND INDUSTRIES.
Not the least important part of Sir Harry McGowan's speech was concerned with his plea that encouragement should be given by the Government to capital outlays on new ventures by a more elastic system of Income Tax allow- ances for wear and tear of plant. He maintained that the Crown cannot properly reply that the Income Tax Acts provide an allowance for obsolescence of plant because that allowance only becomes effective if new expenditure is incurred in replacing the obsolete plant. New ventures which do not succeed do not renew their plant and thus have no means of obtaining an allowance, in which event the provision of the Act is an empty shell. The Government, said Sir Harry McGowan, " shares the profit ..of success but declines to share the risk of failure." --
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