We pleaded guilty.
"And did you see Charlie Peace?
We shook hands with his mother, patted him affectionately on the head and scurried to Baker Street station. There are limits to any man's patience, and if we had told the truth, which was that though the model was numbered 41 we had completely missed Charlie, not only would there have been a torrent of enquiry as to why, but an already damaged reputation would have been irretrievably ruined, feat estat the first of which question of agricultural industry and
Stlegediy shall be free of income tax, which, Rowever, cannot be seen from the present wording of the law.
The experience of other countries shows that in many cases the col-Ieetion'of taxes at the source of the income is preferable to individual declarations of each tax-payer, and moreover, it is much cheaper for {the government on one side and more convenient for the te-payer on the other side. This is true, for instance, specially for the income tax imposed fon salaries and. on interest accrued from.bonds, ete. The anticipation expressed in some quarters that the Income tax will have to be pald in advance on the basis of an estimate of the anticipated income seems to be unfounded according to the free translation published.
$20 per Month Exemption Utterly contradictory to the experience of Western countries is the Jeeale given in Art. 3, 4 and 5 in connection with the amount men-toned as free of income tax: without any reference to the question the particular statistical base on which the scale.has been worked out by the Government and in consideration of the absolutely different purchasing' Power of the Chinese population, must be said that an amount of $30 per mensem as free of income tax an, even in China, never mean what it should be, ie, a minimum income on which every individual, per average, should be able to live.
'The amounts of tax as published are' so minute in the' lower categories that the costs of collecting, even if the system is efficient and elaborate, would take a considerable part of the State's gross out of this fax. Even in taking the local conditions of China into consideration one compelled to ask whether It would not be hotier in the interest of both the Government and the tax-payer to combine a higher amount of {n= come, free of tax, with higher tax rates' for larger incomes, 'Apart from. the impossibility of treating Chinese and foreigners in the same manner with regard to" the amount of income, free of tax, it 1s striking that no difference has' been made between a bachelor, a married man, of a father with family, though the jatter, the same income assumed, can spend much less money per head that the single man, 'The possibility of making life insurance and. other forms of voluntary private old age pension popular by making them free of income' tax to a. certain amount, as in other countries, has, unfortunate ly, not been used.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.