POSTSCRIPT
-SATURDAY SATURDAY NIGHT.
of grievance. The merchants, tradesmen, and inhabitants of the Tower Ward met yesterday, Mr. Deputy Finnis in the chair, to complain of the wholesale surcharging of returns under the Income-tax Act. A letter of explanation from Mr. Welch, the Government Surveyor, was read ; and the following passage pats the facts in a compact shape-
" The Ward of Tower assessment contains under schedule A, Property, 611 persons assessed; of this number 142 have been increased by the Ward Assessors
and eight by myself, and in the number of my increases there are two who did not make returns. In the assessment under schedule D, Income, 1,542 assessed ; of this number 556 have been estimated by the Ward Assessors, it being alleged by such officers that those persons did not make returns; which allegation, from
the inquiry I have made, I believe to be partially untrue, as I think some of the parties made returns, and the Assessors have mislaid or lost them. Out of the assessments here referred to I have made 62 additions; but I think I can truly say I have not made six of those additions without the suggestions of the Ward Assessors."
Mr. Chambers, one of the District Surveyors, gave some explanation in person— He stated that he had at first sent in hia book to the office of the Govern- ment Surveyor, made up according to the actual return; that the book had been sent back to him, with a message that any schoolboy could fulfil the du- ties of the office as well, and that he was required to revise and raise the amounts. He had done this most reluctantly ; and be would be most happy, when called upon, to produce his rejected assessment.
Complaints were made by individual speakers : by one, that he had been called upon for a fresh assessment after he had paid the tax on a
return accepted at Somerset House, but Government had promised in- quiry into his case : by another, that he had been surcharged both in town and country, and in both cases the appeal had been fixed for the same day. A resolution was moved, and after some very slight oppo- sition carried unanimously, declaring that the meeting " * "does not intend to consider, upon the present occasion, the ne- cessity or policy of the Property and Income-tax; the meeting having been
convened solely for the purpose of denouncing publicly, and in the strongest
language, the manner in which a large number of the returns in the district have been sent back, and the amount of the tax increased by an improper and vexatious system of surcharges ; which unwarrantable mode of increasing the tax can only be done by doubting, a ithout investigation or reason, the accuracy of a solemn declaration."
[Taken together, the explanations of the two Surveyors seem to expose gross mismanagement in the working of the act: the Govern- ment Surveyor appears to lay blame on the District Surveyors. as if they originated the contumelious because sweeping rejection of the returns ; the District Assessor describes a general order from Government to find people liable to more tax. Perhaps many of the assessed are not blameless in tacitly conspiring to evade the full amount chargeable upon them. In any case, the annoyance of the " trouble-tax is now in full swing ; and such modes of conducting the assessments are calculated to provoke the utmost exasperation instead of diminishing the evils inherent in the measure. This neglect to give the most artistical finish to the details in constructing such a " ticklish" measure might prove the unwetted heel of Achilles to the Cabinet.]
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