WAR TAXATION

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20058, 3 October 1939, Page 6

WAR TAXATION

BRITISH BURDEN CHEERFUL RESPONSE CHANGES IN LIVING OPPOSITION APPROVAL SUGAR TAX OPPOSED (British Official Wireless.) Reed. 1.50 p.m. RUGBY, Oct. 2. The debate on the Budget was continued in the House of Commons today. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Captain T. H. F. C. Crookshank, claimed that the taxpayers’ response to the Budget had been truly remarkable and was one more sign, if a sign were needed, of the British people’s determination to contribute in the financial sphere to winning the war. Something like £888,000,000 would be obtained as a result of the April Budget and £197,000,000 from the present Budget. Such figures were truly remarkable. Yet in the full year the taxation under this Budget would produce not £197,900,000 but £220,500,000. The new rates of income tax, surtax and death duties were going to produce farreaching changes in the lives of thousands of people.

The increases in indirect taxation too, would be borne with resignation and even cheerfulness by the general body of consumers. The excess profits duty had not been unexpected. It would replace the armaments profits duty on which the House spent many hours earlier in the year. That tax was levied only on armament firms, but the new tax would fall upon all firms, whether engaged in armaments or not. It was the right sort of tax for war time.

Captain Crookshank informed the House that at the end of last week a circular was sent to all departments reminding them that the strictest economy must be exercised over the whole field of public expenditure because of the imperative necessity of husbanding the financial resources of the country so as to make them available to the utmost for purposes of war. The usual Treasury control might be trusted to be exercised to the utmost.

Dr. Hugh Dalton (Lab., Bishop Auckland) expressed satisfaction at the decision of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon, to avoid the error of the last war of paying only a small fraction of the cost at the time and borrowing the balance at exorbitant rates of interest. He (renewed the Labour Party’s

criticism of the sugar tax and also urged the retention of the existing abatement in respect to children and earned income. He suggested that Sir John Simon might make up the loss of estimated revenue in these concessions bv a tax assessed on capital. Sir P. A. Harris (Lib., Bethnal Green) said he believed the country was generally in favour of the emergency Budget proposals.