Untitled

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1932, Page 12

INCOME TAX PAYMENTS

QUEUES LINE UP

£20,000,000 IN ONE DAY

(British Official Wireless.) (Received 2nd January, 1 p.m.) RUGBY, Ist January. The most surprising spectacle in London to-day was the sight, of queues of people at the Inland Revenue Collectors' offices waiting to pay three-quar-ters of their year's income tax on the first day it became due. The authorities had made an appeal to the people to pay promptly, and they have beon astonished at the willing response. If the collectors in the provinces have had the same experience as those in London it is estimated that something approaching £20,000,000 in tax has been paid in to-day. Heavy instalments of income tax, totalling some £200,000,000, are due for payment next month, and the authorities express confidence that the money will bo forthcoming before the end of the financial year on 31st March. EXAMPLES OF PATRIOTISM. Many notable examples of practical patriotism' are recorded, in -which taxpayers have waived their rights to the repayment of taxes. Surtax payers have in some cases added gifts to the payments which they have made in advance. Voluntary gifts of money ranging from the trivial sum of fifteen pence up to hundreds of pounds have been \seut to the Treasury, and gifts in kind, consisting of pieces of JeTvollery and other valuables, have been received. Tho revenue authorities state that no such demonstration of public determination to meet the crisis has been experienced since the war. BUDGETARY POSITIdN. The returns to the Exchequer for the first three-quarters of the current financial year, which ends on 31st March, have been made available for publication. They reveal an excess of expenditure over revenue to date of £203,753,000, or about £23,000,000 more than at the corresponding date in 1930. The excess of expenditure over revenue at this time of year is a perfectly normal feature of these returns, and is due entirely to the fact that nearly three-quarters of the income is not received until the last quarter of the financial year. The increase in the deficit as compared with last year is in fact no greater than could be covered by the special receipt of £23,000,000 odd dne to be paid into expenditure from the exchange account in the course of the next quarter. 'Apart from this, a very large proportion of the new taxation, totalling £40,500,000, imposed by the supplementary Budget of September, falla to be collected in the last quarter of the financial year. As regards expenditure, the total provision for debt interest and sinking fund,was fixed by the September Budget at 322 million pounds, of which £275,784,000 has been issued to date. For supply services, the revised September Budget allowed a total of £451,800,000 after due provision for anticipated economies, as compared with an actual expenditure in 1930 of £429,850,000. The actual expenditure on supply services to date, however, is almost exactly the same as that of tho corresponding period last year. It cannot be inferred that the total expenditure for the year will show no excess over last year. Such a result could hardly be expected, in view of the transfer to the Budget of charges for the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Road Fund, previously made from borrowing. The position as regards expenditure is, however, more promising than at the time the September Budget was framed, and the view is held in well-informed quarters that so far as can be forecast at thia early stage there is no special feature in the returns to cause undue despondency.