No Luxury Taxes on Wines or}
Tobacco: No Surtaxes to be Paid It is reliably reported that the [American Consulate-General has eon instructed to clear cargoes held!
Shanghai upon payment of the! Treaty Customs Duty (8 per cent), tonnage dues and Whangpoo Conser. vane Dues. When American-owned foods are so clear, it will not be ne-Jeessary to pay the Washington sur taxes of 24 per cent. This ruling! [will only apply when the Chinese Maritime Customs refuses to d. American-owned goods when tha! offer to pay the treaty duties been made and rejected. At the moment its application is limited to wines and tobacco, but should the! suspended tariff of surtaxes come into effec, the ruling will immediate become' applicable to afl commodi ties which the Customs will refuse to release in contravention to the treaties between China and th United States, This ruling is in harmony with imilar "decisions by the British Japanese and other Governments.
The American and Japanese decisions agree with regard to the Washing {ton surtaxes as neither Government has formally agreed to their impost It is understood that when the [Commissioner of the United States Court for China ruled that his court had no jurisdiction in the customs Jcase which came before him recently, many importers notified shippers*in the United States mot to ship by American companies. The present faction was undoubtedly taken to pre. vent such a catastrophic eventuality for American shipping.
The American Chamber of Com maree has notified its members that! the American Consulate-General is prepared to receive deposits of the Customs duties, ax authorized by, treaty, should the local Customs officials refuse the legal tender und wand the increase on wines, spirits and tobacco. Shipping eompanies, the merchants are informed,) will release cargo on presentation of pal made a big haul as a consequence of infermation to the effect that forzed stamps of the Nationalist Cigarette Tax Bureau were being priated in large quantities in a Japanese establishment in Hongkew. First, they arrested a Chinese who wa: seen leaving the place, and on him they found 600,000 forged one-cent stamps, whilst he is said to have admitted that he had ordered 6,000,000. On his information, the police secured several hundred thousand more of the stamps and arrested another!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.