's City Diary
At 'last Members of Parliament have been shamed into voting by a large majority to establish a compulsory register of their interests. What this will mean when it has been watered down in committee is not difficult to guess. Precious little, I fear.
There are overwhelming reasons for members to strip down and declare not only their capital and income but to expose the more shadowy corners of their financial lives. Discretionary trusts and private companies from which they draw salary and expenses and hold further assets like houses. During the past few days the few Members of Parliament and businessmen to whom I have spoken welcome not only this development of disclosure, but the transatlantic tradition of more candour from a man about his wages or salary.
However, though few men are diffident in the matter of capital position, large or small or if it exists at all, there is virtually no one who would welcome a proposal that made the publication of income tax returns mandatory. It is easy to imagine a public figure with a large capital position carefully deployed in low yielding properties that may still be valued at a very high figure due to imminent reversions yet declaring on his tax return a paltry income. Such income as he might receive would be further reduced for tax purposes, servicing loans for development or paying for repairs. The income declared is in fact no more than the tax payer finds necessary to satisfy the expectations of the revenue the rest being offset in one way or another on further enterprise.
It has been a common delusion, fostered by the Press, it sometimes seems, that when a John Davies or Sir William Armstrong leaves public life for a lavishly paid job in the City that most of the high salary he gets disappears as surtax
at 95 per cent. If anybody receiv. ing such an income says such 8 thing to me I will call him a fool ei a certain liar. There are friocn strategemS from buying life Jo' surance endowment policiesvvith, tax deductible premiums to tI forming of private companies ted hold the service contract an receive the income gross. Give a man a large income arid he keeps mach more of it than tie loses, whatever he tells his C0_411' or shareholders or ,Pu'rl,
workers.
Delayed thaw
If, it is good news that ill Government has decided to en the current freeze of busines, rents, it is also bad news that tip: restrictive practice will not finally done away with ufl13 nearly two years hence, that is March 1976. Even the graclust relaxation — on the basis of 'firs, in, first out', allowing busities rents to rise to the market level o' November 1972 — will not bee until next May. There seems to be no reason 9d1 all why the whole process — Oh; that it is admitted that it will v" beneficial — should be so long delayed. Sir John Foster argued hit these pages a few weeks ago tlia, this August would be a realistijc date for increases to be alloWeui
n
Since any sort of governmeta' machinery grinding into acti00 tends to match the mills of God, that may well have been too much. to hope for; but one would Or tainly like to have seen the matter treated with more urgency the the over-cautious Mr Anthon, Crosland has been able to muster,' I was surprised to find prppertY men so disinclined to comP18.11/, about the length of the continuin! freeze. Evidently they had fear they would have to endure a far longer period of curb on invest', ment, so are grovellingly gratefln for the small mercy of knowingd where they stand — or may stall in a year or two.
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