[To TER EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR. ") Sin, — In your issue of
the 17th inst. you make some valuable suggestions for new taxes, and I therefore venture to submit the following, which, if you think it impracticable, you will throw into the wastepaper basket, but should it commend itself to you, will, I am confident, be urged with far greater force than I can give it. Let a Government tax of 5 per cent. be imposed upon and added to all bills charged to customers at hotels, boarding-houses, and restaurants—e.g., if the bill amounted to, say, £1, the 5 per cent. tax would be ls. ; total payable by the customer, £1 ls. I should propose that accounts under £1 be exempt, and also all accounts incurred in establishments of less than a certain rental or annual value. The tax would not entail any additional expense in collection, nor to the proprietors, but would be a direct tax upon the large amount of unnecessary consumption of food and drink in hotels and restaurants. So far as it was a tax upon the cost of rooms at an hotel, it would be paid by those obviously able to afford it. You, Sir, a e doubtless aware of the mode in which railway companies charge for season tickets, to the price of which they add the Government tax and collect it from the bolder in one payment.--Having been for forty years a constant reader of your review, I beg, while enclosing my
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