TAXES MULTIPLIED

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 July 1930, Page 4

TAXES MULTIPLIED

A MISPLACED CIPHER

One wonders what would happen if any community in England suddenly found its taxes multiplied by ten, with no other reason than that a clerk had been absent-minded or careless. This, says the Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, has happened to the inhabitants of the He de Re, a community of French fishermen who have .heir own trade union. When the fisherman received their tax demand notes they were astounded to find that they amounted in some jases to more than the' recipients had earned. It appears that the amount of the total taxation had' been multiplied by a clerk, who put an extra cipher on to the end of the sum really due. This has been admitted in a letter from one of the fiscal authorities to the Senator of the Department in which the Ho de Rc is situated.

But anyone who has to deal with French administration knows well enough that when once a thing has been written it must stand, pending, perhaps, years of judicial procedure. The fishermen’s union is therefore going to pay the difference between the legal tax and that levied through a clerical error that is, nine-tenths of the amounts of the demand notes.

The union will, of course, take steps to recover the large sum which an extra cipher in an account book has cost. For the tax-collector to have admiLted s an error and sent out fresh demands cancelling the others, would have been too simple for the bureaucratic mind.