Theatre Taxes
The claims of the " living theatre " to some preferential treatment in respect of entertainments duty are now admitted by the Govern- ment, and in the present Budget the Chancellor proposed a " more modest series of increases " for the living theatre than that applied to cinemas. The case for the former is overwhelming. It has to compete against a form of entertainment which is mass-pro- duced. It is impossible to produce a stage-play and put it on profitably in a theatre without charging higher admission-fees than are usual in a cinema. Moreover, tha plays which ought most to be encouraged are among those which ought to be accessible to popular audiences ; and this principle is admitted in the assistance given by the Government through C.E.M.A. The films themselves owe a great debt to the living theatre, from which they draw so many of their recruits. But, in fact, it cannot properly be maintained that the apparent discrimination in favour of the theatre in respect of tax is a real one. It is true that on a shilling seat the tax is smaller. But the people who go to the one shilling (plus tax) seats in a cinema are those who would generally go to seats costing not less than 2s. 6d. (plus tax) in a theatre. The tax in the former case is 81c1.,; in the latter it is 1rd. In practice, therefore, the duty still falls at least as heavily on the theatre as on the cinema.
Previous page
