14 AUGUST 1936, Page 20

BEER TAXES AND BEER PROFITS

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]

SIR,—Your correspondent Mr. A. H. Oliver agrees that beer is " abominably overtaxed " and argues that that is the cause of the poor quality that is now being manufactured.

But I learn from the current Press that the consumption of beer since 1933 has increased by three million barrels ; that brewers' profits have risen by over three millions sterling annually and that the market value of their shares has increased during the same period by some fifty millions.

If this is so, and I am assuming the figures are approximately correct, it sheds a different light upon the subject of the taxation of beer as well as its effect upon the profits of the Trade.—

Yours truly, SYDNEY E. WATSON. 14 Thornhill Gardens, Sunderland.