DECLINE IN THE ENGLISH REVENUE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2124, 13 January 1880, Page 3

DECLINE IN THE ENGLISH REVENUE.

The Exchequer accounts for the second quarter of the current financial year have been, published, and the “ Timcs” remarks that it cannot be agreeable to have to confess that the revenue of the country is declining, yet this is the revelation forced upon us. The total income received during the six months just ended is’, indeed, just the same as that received in the same period of 1878 —strictly it shows an increase of £4050 —but this equation is due entirely to the increased rate of the Income tax, which made that item of receipt more productive by £729,000 than it was in the corresponding months of 1878. Wc have, in fact, been receiving arrears of a tax levied at od in the pound, instead of arrears of a tax levied at 3d in the pound. The additional receipts from this source arc, moreover, becoming exhausted; and hence we have the result that while the revenue of the six months has produced, as we have said, a trifling sum of £4OOO more than last year, the revenue of the last thx’cc mouths shows a decrease of £IOO,OOO as compared with the same quarter of 1878. The income of last quarter has been in truth singularly unsatisfactory. It may almost ho said that that very source of . revenue has yielded in it less than before. There is an increase in the interest received on advances and on the miscellaneous receipts, but these are not revenue items. They have nothing to do with the productiveness or unproductiveness of taxation. They arc credits corresponding to debts on the other side, and but for greater regularity of account might be struck out both from receipts and expenditure. The real soui’ces of revenue, the Customs, and Excise Duties, Stamps, Land Tax and House Duty, Post office and the Crown Lands, have all brought in during the three months, July—September, 1979, less than thej’- did in 1878. The single item on the other side is that of Income Tax producing a large income of £78,000: and this must be mainly referred to the operation of the increasing rate still working in the way we have explained. A falling off along the line is not an enlivening fact, even where there is no inheritance of past deficits to make good. Unfortunately, we have arrears from last year and from the year before’ and the revised Budget of the current twelve months shows a deficiency approaching to £1,200,000, even supposing the full estimate of revenue to be realised.