TAXATION.
(To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—Your excellent article on "The Government's Essential Task," and the letter of Mr. Herbert Gibbs, clearly prove the necessity for a comprehensive inquiry into the amount and incidence of taxation. Will you permit me to emphasize what you rightly call "the importance of simplifying direct taxation," which ought to be included in any public inquiry ? As you suggest, there never was the smallest need for applying the super-tax. The same amount could have been obtained by a graduated income-tax with infinitely less complication, irritation and expense. It was necessary to set up a new department of Special Commissioners, entailing an immense amount of correspondence which could have been avoided. One may now find oneself involved in letter-writing to five different offices, far apart, which must be occupied in writing to each other, although it would have been easy to deal with income-tax demands and the settlement of allowances and rebates through a single local centre whenever appeal to higher authority is not required.
The fact is that the forms issued to the taxpayers are sl absurdly complicated as, in many cases, to require expert legal advice, while the methods as a whole are such as to entail the maximum amount of clerical work. Among the causes which have led to the building up of unwieldy bureau cracies, the want of simplicity in forms is not the least im- portant. Any business firm which adopted the Government methods in dealing with its clients would speedily be ruined. It is not difficult to devise forms which the ordinary layman can understand without expert assistance: but this is not the desire of departments, which have to justify their existence by the mass of work which, in great part, they themselves create. Most legislation is now so drafted as to lead to innu- merable legal puzzles when interpretation becomes necessary, and Finance Bills are conspicuously faulty. This raises other questions of cause and effect on which I must not enter. I hope that you, Sir, will continue to press for an inquiry which may lead not only to a reduction in the crushing burden of our present taxation, but to the adoption of intelligent and economical methods of collection.—I am, Sir, &c.,
SYDENHAAL
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