TAXES MULTIPLIED

Taranaki Daily News, 15 July 1930, Page 7

TAXES MULTIPLIED

TEN-FOLD INCREASE. A MISPLACED CIPHER. Ono 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. 1 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 their own trade union.

When the fishermen received their tax demand notes they were astounded to find that they amounted in some cases 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 tho 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 lie de Re is situated.

But anyone who has to deal with the French administration knows well enough that when once a thing has been written it must stand, pending, perhaps, yearn 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 admitted an error and sent out fresh demands cancelling the others, wotild haverbecn too simple for the bureaucratic mind.