ADVERTISING' TAX
SIR,—We in the advertising business arc all very much aware of the revival by the Labour Party of the old-idea of the tax on advertising, which Pharos mentions in your issue of April 25.
This has been talked about for at least thirty years, but has never come to fruition—and there is a very good reason why it should not.
Leaving aside all the pretty thoroughly known facts of mass production calling for mass• selling and consequent price reduction, there arc a good many other points that Mr. R. T. Paget (quoted by Pharos) should know.
Is he aware, for example, that the city of Balti- more recently actually imposed a city tax on ad- vertising, only to find that it produced so much trouble from so many different directions that the Maryland State Legislature enacted an ordinance overruling and rescinding it?
And there is another point that Mr. Paget might like to know. We live in an age of 'packaged goods' —never before in modern times has the public so depended upon receiving the commodities it needs as proprietary packed brands. Although this state of affairs may well produce some disadvantages, its advantages •far outweigh them. In 'any case, it is a system we are stuck with, whether we like it or not—and the system simply does not work without modern broadscale advertising. To hamper it by an
advertising tax would merely be like trying to save money by fieducitig the -amount of oil you put in your motor-car engine.—Yours faithfully,
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