The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been rather stubborn and
unyielding this week in his attitude to amendments to the Finance Bill. The amendment for instance which would extend the income-tax allowance for a child at school to a child apprenticed to a trade or profession was one that he might well have accepted. His arguments that it might lead to other concessions, and that the relief to parents would not amount to more than five pounds a year, were very unconvincing. He might too have given more sympathetic consideration to the new clause which was designed to end the anomaly by which a man is compelled to contribute under the Means Test to the maintenance of members of his family and yet is given no income-tax allowance for these dependent relatives. Apart from any other considerations debates on the Finance Bill are likely to become very dead affairs if the Chancellor refuses to make any con- cession, however small, which would necessitate a minor adjustment of taxation.
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