“GETS HIS GOAT”

Waihi Daily Telegraph, Volume XXXI, Issue 8832, 12 October 1942, Page 2

“GETS HIS GOAT”

INCOME TAX DEMANDS “ PAY IT WITH MUSIC ” CHEERFUL ADVICE BY PUNCH Harassed payers of income tax will appreciate the following question and answer culled by a correspondent from a recent issue of “Punch”:—

Question: Since receiving his income tax demand my father, a retired sugar-broker, has been behaving rather oddly, writing letters' to the- papers under the pseudonyms “Date Colonel R.A.F. V and “Two Working Mothers”—always a sign of despondency with him—and reading aloud things like Walt Whitman’s “I should like to go and live with the animals.” I have tried to coax him to thin the onions or begin a little bedding-out, and the vicar has added his mite, but to no purpose. He says it is the curt impersonality of the whole technique that gets his goat (as he puts it). Could you suggest any line of argument we might try?—(Miss) E. G. Spen-cer-Cardigan. Answer: Like other warm-hearted taxpayers, your .father is repelled by the apparent indifference of the Inland Revenue authorities to his sacrifices, an impression which a more direct personal appeal on their part could at once remove. You might assume Mr S-C. that the bringinging together of the taxpayer and the taxgatherer will be no small part of our post-war reconstruction effort. Demands, I am told, will be more in the nature of greetings telegram, while each township will hold its “Income Tax Week,” a festive season during which, to the strains of a military band swinging “Pay It With Music,” even the most grudging will be won over to submit their dues cheerfully when they see that they arc to receive Sir Kingsley Wood’s personal signature in receipt. Another suggestion is that the authorities may organise some recognisable insignia of reward on the lines of Army decorations —e.g., badges to be worn on the lapel by those whose returns reach a certain figure, armlets for those who have never put the Inland Revenue personnel to the inconvenience of a final appeal, and so on. By this means it would be no uncommon thing to find men with limited incomes, like your father, deliberately falsifying . their returns in an attempt to get into the super-tax class.