On Tuesday another amendment to the Address was moved by
Mr. Royds, who demanded that the methods of land valuation should be in accordance with the intentions of the House and the declarations of Ministers. Increment duty, as, for instance, in the Lumsden case, was being levied upon the fortuitous profits of builders. Mr. Masterman, in the absence of Mr. Lloyd George, defended the methods of valuers, and stated that, far from taxing builders' profits, they had not asked a single builder to pay a farthing of the duty except in the special circumstances of the Lumsden case. In that case they had taxed profits obtained from the monopoly value of land, and in doing that the Inland Revenue had merely carried out the intentions of Parliament. If the increment tax had yielded only a small revenue it was because of the concessions made by the Government when the tax was discussed, and, above all, because of the concession that allowed a 10 per cent. deduction from site value before any duty could be levied.
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