INCOME TAX FOR ALL

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1930, Page 5

INCOME TAX FOR ALL

SHOWING THE COST . MORAL Of SOCIAL SERVICES. THE PURPOSE OF TAXATION. How much of our taxation is devoted to purposes in which we all share and how much is for social services which involve taking from those who have to give to those who have not ? This question is asked by Mr. A. P. Herbert, the humorist, in “A Letter to Mr. Winston Churchill,’’ published in the “Week-end Review.” Mr. Herbert submits • an original proposal for a statement of the purposes of taxation. Dear Mr. Churchill (writes Mr. Herbert), Mr. Snowden and you continue to behave like two cats on a wall. The country snores and turns over and mutters feeble complaints about the disturbers of its sleep. 1 give full credit to the Conservative Opposition for the nevt vigour of their opposing. I am shocked by the mulish, priggish, doctrinaire, bad-tempered offensiveneps of. M.r. Snowden; but that we can at least punish vicariously by dealing in the same spirit ' vyi th . bis income tax officials. But 1 am shocked even more by the utter failure of the Conservatives to meet the insufferable fenowden’s challenge to find an alternative way of raising the money. .They have made small gestures towards the reduction of expenditure, but on the other matter, unless 1 wrong them, they have produced not one constructive alternative. ; . , ' . / ' It almost looks as if you had failed to read the earliest numbers of this Review in which these matters were fully and wisely discussed. Conservative members (and The Tinies) ""have deplored the growing gulf between representation find direct taxation, the absence of a sensei' of responsibility in those ’ who spend the public money or for WhOid it is spent. But none of them seems' to have considered the obvious remedy recommended by the Week-end ReView —Income Tax For All—collected at the sourceby all employers, and, in the case of the lowest wage-earners, by ' means of stamps, on the lines of the .insurance payments. (I would /even' collect a small income tax on what is called the “dole”— not for the money but for the moral effect}. Well, here is a measure which would meau an economy in collection, a restoration of the income tax to a more or less moral basis (which at present it entirely lacks),, and an increase of revenue the extent of which I cannot estimate, not having the material, or the arithmetic. It would be worth while to establish the principle even if the gain in revenue were not enormous; it is at least one answer to Mr. Snowden’s challenge; and if you could, stop cocking snooks and go into the matter some of us would read the Budget debates with less impatience. MORE QUID LESS QUO. It i® time that the basis of taxation were re-examined and questioned. The ola theory was that individuals surrendered a proportion of the fruits of their labours to the sovereign or the State in return for services rendered to them collectively—their defence from foreign foes, civil riot, and criminals, the upkeep of the navy, the army, and the drains. Taxation was a quid pro quo. For the earned-income-taxpayer to-day that is. all changed. There is far more quid and far less quo. What proportion of that 4s 6d in the £ comes back to him in the form of State services which he himself enjoys? I do not know exactly, but you ought to. Leave out of account the National Debt, and the national expenditure is about £500,000,000. And about half of'that, I suppose, is “Social .Services” —in other words, so far as the earned Income-taxpayer is concerned, charity —the feeding, pensioning, -■doctoring; an. educating of other people and their children. . Now it is all very well to say. to a rich man A who has inherited wealth, “You have got money—you 1 must give some of it to poor B who has not.” But to say to C, who has inherited nothing, “You have earned money;—you must give some of it to poor B who has not,” is a very different proposition. But the State to-day makes no distinction (or practically none) : ■ between the two propositions. The earned income allowance is ludicrously small. “REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH.” .Mr. Snowden, with his “redistribution of wealth,” talks as if the second proposition were morally the same 1 as the first. What moral right lias anyone to “redistribute” such “wealth” as. I am able to scrape together, and spend it on the education of other people’s children when I want to save it for the education of my own? None, that 1 can discover. We have become so dazed and submissive that wc now accept it as a natural and proper thing for a mannerless prig like Mr. Snowden to “redistribute” our earnings not for our benefit but for other people’s. The private citizen of to-day may be excused, for sinking into fatalism, but there is no excuse for our hired representatives in Parliament. My figures and proportions are probably inaccurate (I am writing in a bathing-dress and have no Blue Book on me), but somebody should study the uational accounts and find out the correct figures. And then the national accounts should be made out in a special form for the income taxpayer. Just, as he has to distinguish in his returns between the money he earns and the money he does not, so the • State should distinguish in its demands between the money which it spends on him (and everybody else) . and .the money which it spends on other sections of. the community only—the Public Services on one side (e.g., the army, the navy, etc.) and the State Charities (e.g., free education, pensions, etc.). And the sum demanded of him should be divided into two portions accordingly. I don’t know that anything. very practical would follow from this. But the moral effects might be large. ■ In the ■ first .place .the income taxpayer would know where he is, as he deserves io.do; and once he realised where he was there might follow that income tax strike which in my view is the one hope of bringing down t. national expenditure. Secondly, the moral iniquity of the Budget would be exposed. And, thirdly, we might exact in the early months of the year a very different tone and treatment from Mr. Snowden and his blood-suckers. The income taxpayer is too often treated as if he were a .sort of criminal who has done wrong to earn money and must pay a fine. CHARITABLE SERVICES. Now these curt letters, scarlet demand noted, threats of distraint, and so forth may be well enough where the citizen is failing or refusing to pay his due share towards the Public Services, b- which he benefits. But as to that portion of the tax which is demanded for the .State charitable services a dif<<waut tone would surely be fitting. We

are all Christians, 1 hope, and in spite of the logically unanswerable argument above, I suppose that those of us who are still able to earn a little money are in our hearts foolishly ready to contribute something towards the needs of those who are not. But compulsory charity raises a very small glow in the bosom at the best, and it should certainly not be enforceable by the scarlet threat and the distraint of our furniture. An entirely different set of rules and penalties, should attach to the nonpayment of the charitable portion of the income tax. It should not, for example, be possible to send a man to prison for failing to educate his. neighhour’s children.

Further, once this distinction became a regular feature of the public accounts we should be. forced to consider which of the. charities we can really afford. We are going to spend more''on what we call public education. 1 would not spend a penny more on education until we have really considered whether our system of public education is really worth the money, which T doubt. ■ Mt’iiuwhilc, I. should put an end to, the pre-

posterous system of free education. Nothing for nothing, as I have said before. We could afford it when it began; we cannot afford it now. If a man can afford to contribute to his union, go to the pictures, buy cigarettes arid beer, then he can afford to contribute, say, a penny a week to the education of his child. I have just slipped indoor and found a Whitaker’s Almanack. I see that in 1927 at the public elementary schools alone (England and Wales) there was an average attendance of 5,000.000 children. A penny a week per child for, say, forty weeks means 200.000,000 pennies, which seems to me to mean £8,000,000 (? £800,000). That is not counting Scotland, and the secondary and technical schools. Call it £10,000,000 (? £1,00.000)—not to be sneezed at. And why in the world should education be free?’ That penny would be a hardship to no man. but it might make many a man think. Well, Mr. Churchill. I have increased the revenue and reduced the expenditure. And T hope that you. having the facts and figures at your disposal,- will

„o carefully into my proposals and spit them-out at'your next scratching match on the garden wall. Believe me. there is some sense in them; though I am’prepared to be persuaded that they are not all quite so sound as they seem to me now on this rather sunny afternoon. At least they arc a constructive answer to snarling Philip—ami I do not think you -have given him one yet.