MILLIONAIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 11 (Supplement)

MILLIONAIRES.

BRITAIN'S BIG LIST. oveb hundred n&mes. BUDGET AND THE DEATH DUTIES. According to a recent London cable mcr .. gtt there are 562 millionaires in QrMt Britain and northern Ireland. This artimate j, ba ße d on the assumption that ereryone with an income of over £50,000 year must be a millionaire, because £50 000 represents a return of 5 per cent on a capital of £1, ft oo,ooo, and accord- £ to the latest official returns issued jjf the Inland Revenue Department in London 562 persons in Great Britain and northern Ireland paid income tax and super-tax on incomes of over £50,000 last figures in comparison with those for previous years show that there has been no decrease in the number of British millionaires in recent years, and despite the trade depression that set in leven years ago the number is Btill greater than in pre-war years. In the British financial year 1911-12 only 261 persons paid income tax on Incomes in excess of £50,000 a year, but by 1014-15 the number had increased to 326. Then came an industrial boom created by the war, which added to the number of British millionaires, despite the fact that the excess profits duty took from 60 to 80 per cent of the war profits of industrial and commercial concerns. During the five years that the industrial fcoom lasted the British Treasury collected in excess profits duty the enormous sum of £1,150,000,000. In the year 1918-19 there were 484 millionaires in the United Kingdom who acknowledged to baring incomes in excess of £50,000. In the following year there was an addition of 56 to this charmed circle, and in 1920-21 the total reached 650, which is 88 more than the total for last year, according to our cabled report. In 1922-23 the total had dropped to 542, and in the next year there was a further drop to 629. Multi-millionaires.

The Inland Revenue. Department has Sever given much information to the public regarding the number of multimillionaires in Great Britain. In its official return dealing with the payers of income tax and super-tax, it groups in a graduated scale, rising by £5000 at a time, the number of persons receiving incomes of £5000 to £30,000; then the groups deal with persons in receipt Of incomes of £40,000, £50,000, £7. r i,ooo and £100,000, but all those with incomes in excess of £100,000 are grouped to gether. But the return does not give the aggregate incomes of persons receiving more than £100,000, and in the year 1023-24 there were 134 of these fortunate people whose aggregate incomes •mounted to £26,261,00(5, or an average of £195,977 for each of them. Three Sesrs earlier the number of multi-mil-onaires receiving incomes in excess of £100,000 was 171, their aggregate incomes amounting to £33,498,379, or an average of £195,890. Some of the Wealthiest of these millionaires doubtless receive incomes in excess of £1000 •a day for every day of the year. There has been a heavy increase in income tax and super-tax "owiug to the war, and the British Treasury takes 9/7 in the pound out of all incomes in excess of £150,000 a year, whereas before the war these taxes would have amounted to less than 2/6 in the pound. The Treasury also collects in probate duty 30 to 40 per cent of the value of the estate of deceased millionaires. Estates exceeding £2,000,000 in value pay the maximum probate duty of 40 per cent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in making np hia budget each year, has to tike Into account the probable number of millionaires who will die in the course of the next financial year and enrich the revenue returns by probate duty on their •states. But he can only guess at the anmocr, and also at how many of them will he multi-millionaires. A fatal epidemic among millionaires would be a good thing for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the probate duty would *k° Vide stll a substantial surplus above the estimated revenue; but a bad year, in which millionaires enjoyed good health, would mean a substantial deficit at the end of the financial year. Yet despite the fact that the probate duty on the estate of a single multi-million-aire (such as that of Sir Ernest Cassell, Which paid £2,440,000 to the Treasury P r ol>«te duty) may mean all the difference between a surplus and a deficit i? £ bud Bet, successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, with the assistance of the Treasury experts, have usually managed to estimate with an astonishing degree of accuracy the total revenue of Great Britain for the financial year irom all sources, which in theso days of neavy taxation exceeds £800,000,000. It is quite impossible to estimate accurately the revenue that will be received under each heading, but experience shows that what is lost on the swings is gained on the roundabouts. British statistics over a long period years chow that millionaires are •eldom in a hurry to die, and that the average age reached by those resident » Great Britain is 75 years, which ®*ceeds the Psalmist's limit of "three •oore years and ten." It has also been own by statistics that as a rule nine * ten British millenaries die in the oourse of each year. There have been years, however, when the number of deaths has been as low as three, and there have been other years when it has reached twenty. American Millionaires. In the United States, which is a much wealthier country than Great Britain, and contains nearly three times as Many people, there are more millionaires wan in any other country in the world. To be a dollar millionaire, an American ooed not be worth more than £200,000, hut even jn a basis of sterling the American millionaires far exceed the »«mber in Great Britain. In the year 1924, according to published official returns, there were 1022 taxpayers in tie United States with incomes in excess of £50,000 a year. Of this number, 314 had incomes of over £100,000 a year; 74 had incomes in excess of £200,000 ; 24 had incomes in excess of £400,000; and three had incomes of over £1,000,000 a year. The figures disclosed on this occasion showed that the largest individual taxpayer was John D. Rockefeller, jun., who paid £1,487,033 in income tax for the - 1923 - Henry Ford paid £493,649; his son, Eds el Ford, £396,800 and we Ford Motor Company £2,889,900. Rockefeller, sen., paid only £24,853; J. p. Morgan, £19,730; Otto Kahn, £36,996; Randolph Hearst, the proprietor of many newspapers, £8100 and Jade Dempeey, who was then boxPg champion, £18,100.