The painful personal interest excited among so many persons by
the issue of the Blue Forms relating to re- assessments under Schedule A for Income Tax has not abated. A great many tenants who were compelled in the War either to buy their houses or to turn out seem to have forgotten that there was a liability to reassessment for Income Tax every five years according to the estimated annual value of the house. But that does not prevent us from sympathizing with them. During the War reassessment had fallen into abeyance. Moreover, the fact that the rent was regulated by the Government not unnaturally suggested that there could be no increase in the annual value. Nevertheless, the persons liable under Schedule " A " were, in effect, informed—with only three weeks in which to appeal, although the basis of reassessment was not revealed to them—that they must consent to a -taxation which assumes the increased value to be generally between forty and one hundred per cent. They complain that the burden which Mr. Baldwin relieved them of in the Budget has thus been reimposed upon them by the Inland Revenue Department. But these are not the times for more taxation.
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