DEATH DUTIES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19961, 20 November 1934, Page 2

DEATH DUTIES

BRITAIN’S HARVEST August 2 was the fortieth anniversary of the passing into law of the Act which imposed death duties on all property, whether real or personal, settled or unsettled —“the greatest financial revolution since Walpole,” as it has been called. Previous to August 2, 1394, the only tax payable on land was succession duty, which was based on the capitalised value of the net rental for the life of the heir. The Death Duties Act imposed a tax on the fully capitalised value of land. The immediate cause of the introduction of Sir William Harcourt’s Act was a deficit of £5,000,000. Within ten year his tax was producing £17,000.000, within twenty years £25,000,000, within thirty years £30,000,000, and in its fortieth year, if the yield continues to exceed the estimate, it may well beat last year’s record of £86,000.000, wrote a correspondent recently in the London "Observer.” The gross amount (the net amount is practically the same) collected from death duties from August 2, 1894, until the end of the last financial year is £1,493,962.806. If the receipts for the first quarter of the present year be added the amount exceeds one and a half billion pounds. The duties have, of course, been increased since Harcourt’s time, the highest rate now being 40 per cent. The yield in the first year was £11,024,211, and until 1909 it rose steadily to £18,582,391, then, in 1910, rose steeply to £22,131,726, and in 1911 to £25,972,117. Until the beginning of the war, however, the aggregate yield was the comparatively modest sum of £352,000,000. In the twenty years since then the aggregate has been more than , three times this amount, and over £1,000,000,000 of it has Been collected since the close of the war.