THE TAXATION OF BACHELORS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The taxation of bachelors must obviously have a terminus a quo ; I should suggest the age of thirty. From this starting-point the Chancellor might work out a progressive scale ; a moderate impost up to thirty-five, increasing at intervals of five years, till at fifty it became, what I ventured to call " prohibitive." There would, of course, as in other connexions, be a system of " Reliefs " for Dependent Relatives ; complete relief in the case of a Widowed Mother, and so on. It is precisely the " well-off " that I had in mind ; the bachelor who " out of selfishness or pure perverseness "—the phrase is Mr. Story's—continues in the single state ; not the man who cannot afford to marry—obviously taxation would not touch him, nor the man who self-deinyingly sacrifices his own happi- ness to keep a home for sisters or mother dependent on him.-- I am, Sir, &c., The School House, Monmouth.
LIONEL JAMES.
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