Taxing Amusements

North Canterbury Gazette, Volume 7, Issue 32, 27 August 1937, Page 4

Taxing Amusements

Mr A. P. Herbert, M.P., is not content with cajoling the Commons and brow-beating the Lords into approval of easier divorce. In the debate on last month’s Finance Bill he did his best to persuade the Chancellor that a tax on entertainments is a tax on “the “things of the mind.” As the law stands, he pointed out, there is no difference between catching two live monkeys and exhibiting them to the public in a cage and offering the public Shakespeare’s plays or Beethoven’s music. He could even remember an occasion “when,

“at a State funeral, entertainments “tax was charged on those who “let rooms from which people “could behold that spectacle.” The Chancellor certainly resisted these blandishments, but it is doubtful if he will be able to do so much longer. The more leisure we give ourselves the more difficult we are making it for our rulers to say that amusements are not necessities. If it is an indulgence to listen to Bach it is a taxable activity to sing hymns, pray, or go to Church. Nor can there be much difference socially, which in this case means politically, between kicking the Devil between the goal-posts and driving him out with tambourine and drum. It is an alliance with the powers of darkness to penalise one effort or the other.