THE MATCH TAX

Evening Star, Issue 23680, 13 September 1940, Page 5

THE MATCH TAX

WHEN BRITONS PROTESTED Yery little complaint lias boon made of the doubling of the Excise duty on matches and of the raising of the .cost of a box of 50 from Id to 1 id, says the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ But what a tremendous pother there was in 1871 when Robert Lowe proposed his match tax I In a sense that, too, was a tax associated with war. The receipts of tiie previous year had largely exceeded the estimates, but Lowe bad to deal with the loss of revenue arising from the abolition of Army purchase, and one of the means he took was to propose a tax of a half-penny on 50 so calmly received to-day. He does not seem to have anticipated the storm which was raised by this proposal; ho was oven wildly humorous, suggesting that the tax should be raised by stamps affixed to each box with a punning Batin moto “ Kx luce iueellum,” probably more to the taste of a House of Commons of 70 years ago than now. Anvhow “ the little tax from light,” though defended by Lowe’s eloquence about the immense waste and the immense consumption of matches, brought a quick reaction from the manufacturers in the east of London, whose employees of both sexes—a less “ civilised ” ' race than to-day-marched in long processions of protest to Westminster and the tax was withdrawn.