TAXATION PROPOSALS

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 41, 17 August 1917, Page 6

TAXATION PROPOSALS

f Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you-!" Numerous as the ailments of the National Government may be, it must be confessed that this is not one of them. It is being abused on every side, not merely for its obvious short-comings, but also for virtues which ought to be equally obvious to the impartial eye. The eye of the candid friend seems, however, to be as free from impartiality as that of the open enemy, and most of the friends of the National Government have been recently smitten with, candour. " Nobody ever loved the National Government," said one of these candid friends yesterday. "We endure it. It is one of the horrors of wax." So far as the taxation which has been the chief centre of controversy during the. past week is concerned, the Finance Minister is entitled to find comfort in the large amount of hostile criticism which his proposals have had to face.. His ■duty to his country was not to make people speak well of him, bat to make them pay up, and the loudness of their complaints may be regarded to a very large extent as the measure of his success. Possibly the Finance Minister may be regarded as paying now for the good things that were said of him when the Budget first appeared. The excellence of its principal features was then the subject of general eulogy, and it is now the details that are coming in for most of the hostile criticism.

We have certainly no sympathy with those who complain that the Finance Minister is exorbitant in his demands. The country is not being asked to pay a penny more than ib can. afford or than it ought to afford, and a surplus this year will give us a good start with the heavier burdens that the following year will inevitably bring. " Last year's surplus," says Sir Joseph Ward, " was based upon safety. This year's surplus is also based upon safety." This is as j|, uhnnUl he, and it must aUo be ad-

being placed upon the shoulders best able to bear it. That there are details open to-criticism must not be allowed to obscure the general excellence of the whole scheme. That the margin of exemption should be lowered in the case of income-tax payers who have no dependents; that the graduated rate should bo increased on the incomes at the other end of the scale; that a distinction between earned and unearned incomes should' be drawn, as in the United Kingdom and elsewhere; and that luxurious expenditure should be made to bear a. larger share of the burden—these are all legitimate points on which Sir Joseph Ward will be wise, to- meet the desires of some of his critics. But the demand for a reduction of» the amount to be raised from all sources should be sternly resisted by the patriotism and good sense of the ■country.