NOTES AND COMMENTS

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXI, Issue 2780, 26 November 1931, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

WHAT BRITONS PAY IN TAXES “Mr H. W. Wilson, whose facts and figures can always bo trusted,” says the “National Review,” explains how the direct British taxpayer has been bled white by four taxes, viz.: Income Tax, Sur-tax, Death Duties, Stamps. Each of these imposts had a comparatively harmless and innocent-looking origin. Income Tax was introduced by tho younger Pitt during the Napoleonic War, ami was repealed at its close in 1815. It w r as reintroduced by Peel in 1842. In the first full year at 7d in the £.l, it produced £3,771,000. On the eve of the Great War at 1/2 it produced £41,000,000. In 1925 it reached £258000,000. The Socialist Government increased it from 4/- to 4/6, but the estimated yield for the current year is only £248,000,000, which may not be realised. “Surtax, called super-tax, was embodied by Mr Lloyd George in his Limehouso Budget in 1909. It was only an extra fid in the £1 on incomes over £SOOO, leviable on tho excess over £3OOO. In its first year it produced £2,891,000. It rose to £35,560,000 in 1918, and to £67,802,000 in 1930. Viscount Snowden reckoned on £72,000,000 in surtax this year. Death Duties were introduced by- Sir William Harcourt in 1894, and produced £11,600,000 in 1895. Mr Snowden expects to get. £90,000,000 from Death Duties this year.