GRAPHIC NOTINGS

Otago Witness, Issue 3830, 9 August 1927, Page 5

GRAPHIC NOTINGS

By

LENS.

(Specially Written for the Otago Witness.)

XXXVII.—THE TOPIC EVERYWHERE.

Ever so many people are either discussing taxes or turning them over. It is an interesting subject with, to the student, several outstanding features. One is the feeling we all seem to have that the Upas growth we observe is all from a planting in our own time, that if T A, one letter over the other, can be made to simulate a human with his arms out and legs parted, the X being a cross, it is all because of now. But “ away back,” as the Americans express themselves, Governments, or what passed as such, went ever so much farther. Throughout Asia are the mounds that tell of power after power that came to bite the dust through excessive taxes. In Europe, for example, Imperial Rome, having reduced her subjugated peoples to the last ditch, and having passed out largely through it, left that light that induced several others to emulate her and share her fate.

England owes much to her insularity. In her case it has been dynasties, and then not always by displacement. But she provides the lesson, as witness Domesday Book, and why it was compiled ; and Henry I’s exactions of tenths turned into doable tenths and hvpothecations to the financiers of Lombardy. Better, witness the rising under Wat the Tyler, Richard II a very conciliatory monarch while the crowd held intact, but a very different one when, with Wat killed, it became i rabble. Better still, witness the ship money, with its tragical result, a thing of infinitely more instruction than the fall of the Bastille.

Lo ! popular government and the people more or less emancipated! Is it the fruit of so many amiable advances along the road of progress? Hardly, but more likely that of angry resistance continued down the generations. No, the growth is not with any modern genesis. At one time, the taxing master simnly asked: “How much have thev got?” and then ■went after it, and. who knows, Perhaps some of the exalted wlio came to grief otherwise were rich.

Why many people are either discussing taxes or turning them over now is, whether it is realised or not. because what the Great War compelled has come to result in a disregard of ethics. We no longer live in those nlacid days when William Ewart Gladstone was a figure to follow. We no longer bother ourselves asking how what we are doing is going to affect our posterity. albeit through the wav we have come to regard it we happen to have anticipated some of the consequences. Of none of the really embarrassed lands can we sav what we do of Great Britain, that if she is taxing her People on a wholesale scale it is to “ <mt back ” again. And of none of the really affluent can we say what we do of the

United States, that she is using surplus after surplus to ease the general burden. But the writer did not intend to be so discursive. What was in his mind when i ho made that drawing was to bring out i the fact that many of us continue to bei lieve that what we cannot see has no i existence, and that touching taxes generally we fail to ask ourselves who pays, i As to the first thing it is the historian’s i privilege to say that Mrs Civicus has : no particular objection to the extra cost of her carpets on the condition that the Customs do not flourish the .duty under her nose, but that if it were the law to deliver the goods and then call for the duty as a separate thing she would show the collector the door. It is like medicine. Let us have our eyes bandaged, and we will swallow even rhubarb and magnesia, but let us see the spoon and I a mere drop will stir us to the depths. There are some famous examples of this peculiarity. No one in England aok any great exception to a certain duty imposed about three generations ago, but the Window Tax, yes, all objected to that, and when it was put around that the man who had suggested it had been struck blind it was felt that it was in the nature of a judgment. But the Chimney Duty, popularly called the Hearth Tax, was the real thing, and the suspicion lingers that the reason why thev repealed it after 25 years was not to remove an “ obnoxious impost," but because it was no longer safe to expect it. As to the Income Tax, that, more or less general in these times, has to be considered from a different angle. For Pitt, when he imposed it in 1798, said : “ Only till we beat Napoleon,” and as the promise was redeemed. Peel, in 1842, had a somewhat easy task. Then, with the Great Reform, it was felt that he was entitled to some sort of recognition. But Parliament, a little later, still thought it wise to limit its operation to a fixed time, and departed from this attitude only because of the Crimean—it caused the hated impost to be doubled. No, there is no doubt about it whatever—Mrs Civicus does not mind the indirect charge half as much as she does the direct one. Jf the schoolmaster says that a 20 per cent, profit on an - article costing the purveyor 50s before would be 33 1-3 less if he could rret it along for 20s, in vain his assertion that it would be because 6s would be turned into 4s ; it will be felt that it is a trick in figures. Even so the patriot can retort that it is calculated to encourage domestic enterprise, and that, anyhow, it is not obligatory to buy anything. And if this is not enough and he is standing for Parliament, he may assert that an income tax is as surely a Socialistic confiscation of what

a man receives in life as the probate duties are of what he leaves when he dies. But what of it when they run together? Alas I the times, when we tax everything wo can get an economic hold of, and when one of the uses of the inventor is to turn out something more for a fresh impost. And now, who pays? Clearly understand that only excessive taxation is comiim under tne whip here. But who pavs, whether it is that or not? Risking contradiction, it will be asserted that all do, that the question of directness merely assumes a different form, and that when it comes to ultimates, exemptions exist mainly i n the imagination. Visualise a pond. Visualise a boy with a stone. V isualise that stone being thrown into the centre of it. For, lo and behold I the ripples it sets up open out and spread till they reach every part of the banks. About the most pathetic thing in its way when the Great War came to an end was the attitude the nations assumed: “ Let us sell ! Let us not buy!” By the measure of the pressure put on them the shipping companies had to raise their fares and freights, and by the measure of the charges imposed on the people their spending power became less. All charges and costs, duties, rates, and what not must be passed on, for while the man who can do it in the nrice of what he sells has a clear course with the ticket, the man who cannot, finding his income impaired, simply spends so much less. To reflect, it is excessive taxation that is being noticed in this paragraph. Of course,- the State must be supported, or it could not. earn- on. But to revert to everything in sight and take from it ata much as can be got, raising expenditure again and again to exhaust the collection, yes, that is the thing to be considered.. While matter, whether solid or liquid, is indestructible it may certainly be dissipated when taxes flux what they attack. In this connection, Aesop, if alive, would have another fable to dictate—a general distribution, a magical act turning all into equals, none richer than any of the others, and none poorer! It is a dream, and a very silly one. Take a stone fresh from the quarry, a fine block, and fit for the foundation of a palace. What is it? Simply sand in cohesion enough for the purpose. But bring the steam hammer of taxes-run-riot down on it, again and again, and what is it? Simply sand like the kind wo find on the sen shore, and of which children build castles for the first wave to dissolve. So many people are either discussing taxes or turning them over, that perchance, this little essay may contain a few. things in connection therewith for the digestion of those who mav happen to read it.