TAXES MULTIPLIED.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 268, 26 August 1930, Page 3

TAXES MULTIPLIED.

A MISPLACED CIPHER. One wonders what would happen if any community in England suddenly found its taxes mutliplied by ten bad no other reason than that a <d ei 'k mV ■ been absent-minded or careless inis (says the Paris correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph”) has happened to the • inhabitants of the He de Re, a community of French fishermen who have their own trade union. . When the fishermen received their tax demand notes they were astounded to find that they amounted ;m some cases to more than the recipients had earned. It appears that the amount of the total taxation had been multiplied by a clerk who put an extra cipher on to the end of the sum really due. inis has been admitted in a letter from one of the fiscal authorities to the senator of the department in which the He de Re is situated. . . But anyone who has to .deal with French administration knows well enough that when once a thing has been written is must stand, pending perhaps years of judicial procedure. Tbe fishermen’s union is therefore goino- to pay the difference between the legal tax and that levied through a clerical error —that is, nine-tenths of the amounts of the demand notes. The union will, of course, take steps to recover the large sum which an extra cipher in an account hook Has cost. For the tax collector to have admitted an error and sent out fresh demands cancelling the others wou d have been too simple for the buieaucratic minds.