THE FINANCIAL FRONT

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 285, 1 September 1942, Page 5

THE FINANCIAL FRONT

Britain Firm And Strong (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 30. Britain’s financial front stands firm and strong, and has made a vital contribution to the war effort, said Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a speech at Dundee. This front, he emphasized, was based on the heaviest possible taxation, borrowing at low interest rates, and the utmost saving. Small savings since the beginning ot the war amounted to £1,500,000,000. The Budget of 1941 had increased by 4,000,000 the number of persons on smaller incomes liable to direct taxation, and there were today some 9,500,000 wage earners and others with small incomes who were making a direct contribution to the war of some £270,000,000 a year through income tax. ~ The weight of taxation today, he said, was such that if they were to take away every penny of income above £2OOO from those whose incomes at present exceeded that figure the gain to the Exchequer would only be about £30,000,000. It was estimated that the number of people with incomes between £lOOO and £2OOO had fallen since 1938 from 100,000 to 105.000: those between £2OOO and £4OOO from 56,000 to 30,750; those between £4OOO and £GOO(> from 12,000 to 1170, and those with £6OOO or more to B °The Chancellor also mentioned that during the last war the rate of interest on war loans increased from 5. to b per cent., but in this war we had not paid more than 3 per cent., and successive issues had been made on even more favourable terms to the Treasury than their predecessors.