In the Commons on Monday the debate in Committee on
the Budget was opened by Mr. Pretyman, who dealt with the land value duties. There was a conspiracy of silence among Ministerialists ; they would talk of everything but this farcical form of taxation, which bad inflicted the greatest injury on the building trade, on small property owners and allotment holders, and on market gardeners. The valuation had been most costly and the net yield quite insignificant. The only tax of the group which had justified Mr. Lloyd George's hopes was the mineral rights duty, and that was not really a land tax at all, but rather an additional income- tax. He denied that the valuation would be of great use. It had not been made on any uniform system ; it was a higgledy- piggledy, untrustworthy production. He recalled the Lumsden case, and said that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer taxed fortuitous windfalls he ought to tax all windfalls. The taxation of builders was peculiarly wrong-headed, for a builder did useful work for the community, whereas a, speculator on the Stock Exchange, who escaped without special taxation of his windfalls, did no good to anyone but himself, and did not always do even that.
