THE INCOME-TAX MUDDLE.
[To THE EDITOR 07 TEM " SP ECTATOR.1
Six,—I read the article in the Spectator with interest, but it only touches a very small part of the question. I am an Assistant Commissioner, and every time I attend a meeting of the Commissioners, I am stupefied by what I see and hear. There seems to be no means of making people disclose what profit they really make, and this reticence is encouraged by the system of assessment. To give an instance—a man made a return of £G,000 for years, and I was asked to consider the case. As he had been boasting of his business in print a good deal, I said, "If what he says is true, put him up to £20,000." The Commissioners had never heard of a like "jump," but the man paid up, and, subsequently, when selling his business he showed that he had been making £30,000 a year for a number of years. If that can happen in the case of a rich trader, what about the struggling men ? What can poor people make of such lingo as schedules A and B ?
If the tax is necessary, which I do not think, all writing about it should be made as clear as a page out of William Cobbett. No tax of national importance should be evadable, as this is continually shown to be.
There are too many societies for this, that, and the other, but I think that a society of income-tax payers might do some good in waking up the Government to the iniquity of the system. As the tax is levied it cannot be satisfactory, just, or right. To make it equitable it would be necessary to have what I understand is the rule in Germany, where all business people liable to income-tax are compelled to keep a simple bookkeeping system.—I am, Sir, &c., W. R.
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