By Leonard Poon
There probably are cogent arguments for the imposition of water use taxes/royalties. Unfortunately, your correspondent Darryl Hook fails to present these.
I quote:
"We....give away our water for most other countries to gain tax revenue"... Wrong. Our water is not given away. It is bottled and sold. The profits from its sale are taxed, as are the wages of the workers bottling it. Additionally, those workers live and spent their pay locally.
Any of our export products which are sold by an overseas company at a profit will generate taxes on that profit which are part of the revenue of the foreign government concerned. Water is no different from wine, apples, infant formula etc in that regard.
"Those... who suggest the imposition of a tariff on bottled water would mean we would have to apply the same tax on users such as farmers.....are totally flawed". No. The flawed reasoning is your correspondent's. The manufacture of a product does not exempt the maker from paying for the raw materials which contributed to it. If such an exemption was the case, bakers would not need to pay for their flour nor vehicle manufacturers for their steel.
Water (like air and sunlight) has been a notable exception to this. If water bottlers are charged for their raw material (water), it is in fact very reasonable that all other industries which use water as a raw material also should be charged.