BRITISH BUDGET

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 63, Issue 4463, 13 August 1941, Page 2

BRITISH BUDGET

FACING GRIM REALITIES. “With this fourth British War Budget we square the circle, reconcile opposites, and marry irreconcilables. It is a triune affair—a Budget of three K’s. Sir Kingsley opened it, Mr Keynes inspired it, and Lord Kindersley will do his best to make it a success. Taxation is remitted to excess profits taxpayers, but the Treasury collects and keeps the money till the war is over. In this Budget of paradoxes, we lose our cake yet have it — or part of it, at least. The authorities are taxing the public now, but after the war the public will ‘tax’ the authorities. Meanwhile, industry has the ‘alleviation’ of Express Profits Tax which it sought, Mr Keynes’s ‘deferred pay’ becomes a fait accompli (but without any of his suggested family allowances), and the National Savings Committee is to collect some hundreds of millions more than before. Actually, all these paradoxes are resolved, and resolved on the Treasury’s side, by the simple fact that while the increased burdens are all immediate, the remissions are all deferred. The solid fact that emerges from all this draft-drawing on the Bank of the Future is that the Exchequer is relieving no one of his present liabilities (except companies developing metals and. oils for war purposes, and sellers of patent medicines), and is collecting an additional £l5O millions this year and £250 millions in a full year by higher income tax and its extension downward into all income groups except the lowest. Undoubtedly, the Treasury has faced grim realities far more realistically—and boldly—than ever before.”—“Financial News,” London.