INCOME TAX

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 133, 2 December 1926, Page 14

INCOME TAX

BRITAIN'S NEW METHOD

NEW ZEALANDER RECOVERS £8000.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON, 6th October,

Income tax recovery and adjustment agencies are" receiving a great many appeals for assistance now that the new Act has come into force. The three years' average is to be given up, and while business profits will be generally assessed from the previous year,, salaries of employees will be based on the current year.

According to one agency from fourpence to £8000 are the extremes of sums-which have been recovered on behalf of clients for overpaid income tax. "Sometimes," said a partner in this firm, "people will come to us thinking that they can get back a large sum from the Government, and yet investigation will prove that they owe still more. On the other p hand, a New Zealand farmer came in a few weeks ago expecting to have to pay more, and we recovered £8000 for him. A very large percentage of our married clients seem to" live apart. A fifty-year-old man who came.in to see me the othe,rday said plaintively; 'I settled' the whole- of my means —£2000 a*year—on my wife. Now' she has taken complete control of it, and only allows me £200 a year, of which I have to pay back half for my board. Can you help me?' Of course, we could not, and told him to see a lawyer." "Our most difficult clients are clergymen, who derive their incomes from such involved sources as tithes and Easter offerings, and are extraordinarily unpractical in their method of keeping accounts. "Actors, actresses, and lawyers also keep very muddled accounts, and they seem to let their figures drift for five years at a time before .they.have a general clean-up. Stockbrokers, on, the .other hand, keep their books in excellent trim, partly, no doubt, because the Stock Exchange compels them: to keep records-of their, trading. "While- bookmakers practically always are glad to accp.yV the Government assessment, doctors seem exceptionally honest, and frequently do not pocket fees that they could easily do without detection."