PAYING THE PIPER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 25 May 1936, Page 10

PAYING THE PIPER

MINORITIES MUST SUFFER (By Air Mail—From Our Own Correspondent) LONDON, 30th April. It is axiomatic that taxation, the main business of all government, tends inevitably to victimisation. The majority always imposes .on the niinority. Our income tax affords a striking" example. It is the heaviest and almost the only direct personal tax, and is levied upon a small minority of the population, or even of enfranchised citizens. About a sixth of the people who vote hears almost half the burden of the nation’s upkeep. Nor is that all. The dictum that minorities must suffer, that being “the badge of all their tribe,” is exemplified even within the charmed circle of income-tax victims themselves. Mr Chamberlain’s extra 3d on the tax with its fresh concessions to matrimony means that the vast majority of married people pay actually less than before. But it increases the*burden on single taxpayers, whether bachelor or widower, despite (ho fact'that, even before this change, they paid about £4 to every £1 paid by revellers in connubial bliss.