Income Tax Changes

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26092, 20 April 1950, Page 5

Income Tax Changes

Sir Stafford Cripps, announcing the changes in income taxes as “a modest adjustment in taxation,” said: “Whatever remissions we can manage must give proportionately more relief to those at the lower end of the income scale. We can just manage to reduce the lower rates of income tax—now at 3s in the £ for the first £5O “of taxable income, and 6s in the £ for the following £2O0 —to 2s 6d and 5s in the £ respectively. That will give the Largest possible proportionate relief to people who pay only at these rates — people with a maximum of up to £6OO a year. This reduction will be concentrated on the block of income which includes practically all overtime.” The Chancellor said that Britain was now in a less inflationary position than at a similar time last year, but she would have to guard against any kind of increase in inflationary pressure if she wanted. to maintain her primary objective of full employment. Sir Stafford Cripps-concluded: “Our general standards are well above those before the Second World War, be- • cause we have been able to keep all : the people employed, and thus have the benefit of their production. Do not let us risk losing the advantages we have built up with such difficulty, just because we are unwilling to acknowledge the need to continue a • while longer the stern measures to • guard otir achievement of full employ- ; ment. i “We have the satisfaction of knowing that we have succeeded, by our planning, in practically eliminating the most undeserved suffering by our people of the long-term unemployment which we tolerated so often and so long in the years before the war.”