340,000 WAR FORTUNES.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 4014, 14 June 1920, Page 4

340,000 WAR FORTUNES.

—— ■♦T" TAX PROCEEDS ESTIMATED AT , £1,000,000,000. The first public meeting of the Select Committee of the House ol Commons on War Fortunes Taxation was held on February 26, Sir William Pearce presiding. The first witness waa Sir John Anderson, Chairman ot the. Board of Inland Revenue, who explained the proposals discussed m the memorandum recently issued by the Board. He stated that these-pro-posals would, it was hoped, produce something like £1,000,000,000, the number of persons liable to pay tax being 340,000. 1 , , , The Board, he continued, had set forth in the memorandum a complete scheme. It exposed, the main difficulties which would have to be overcome if any tax of the kind under consideration were imposed. They would do their best to guide the Committee iwith regard to what was practicable and what was not, and to indicate the probable consequences of any particular course of action, but they had no definite view on concrete questions of policy. The whole operation would certainly need a large staff, but he would not commit himself to exact figures. He thought if the cost were estimated at from one-tenth to onetifth of 1 per cent, of the wliole thing, -there could not be serious objection. The estimated number of persons, he continued, who would be liable to rpay tax under the precise form set out in tfche. memorandum was placed at 340,000. He agreed that undoubtedly in each of these cases there would (be several diffierent valuations, such »s machinry, houses, land, pictures, and. the 340,000 would have to be multiplied considerably to arrive at the number of valuations. - • ■~~~~^