A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
ENTERTAINMENT duty is in the public eye for more reasons than one. There is first of all the question of the exemption of a number of plays, The Lady's Not for Burning and Street Car Named Desire among them, from payment of duty on the ground that they are non-profit-making and that some educational or cultural value is rightly or wrongly ascribed to them. It is plain from the numerous questions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had to answer that the House is extremely discontented with the present arrangement and expects some impartial and exhaustive examina- tion into its working. At the same time film-producers and distributors are drawing attention very effectively to some really gross anomalies in the incidence of the duty. An extreme case is Hamlet. When that play is produced in the living theatre the tax on a Is. 9d. seat is 2d., when a film of the play is shown the tax on a Is. 9d. seat is Ilid. Some discrimination in favour of the living theatre is no doubt defensible, but discrimination of this degree is beyond justification. If British films are to survive at all taxes so heavy as actually to reduce attendances by the effect they have on prices must be substantially modified.
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