Now, to any accountant in the first year of his articles, it is clear enough ihat while the first and second of these are taxes on income, the third is a levy on capital. To Englishmen, ith their long tradition in paying Ixes, and to the British Treasury, with its long experience in levying them, the whole idea of attracting part of a man's income to the State is entirely familiar. And although the working out of practical details may present formidable difficulties, the objects of special war or near-war taxation of profits are clear and undisputed. They are threefold: (1) to provide -additional revenue for the Exchequer at a time when State expenditure is abnormally high; (2) to limit undesirable forms of consumption, so as to increase savings available for Government loans and release men and plants for purposes of national importance; and (3) to satisfy the demands of public opinion that there should be some tax on individual aggrandisement out of a national emergency. The first of these may be called the financial aspect, the second, the economic, and the third, the moral, Now. in the case of what has been loosely called a "levy on war wealth," all three objectives are present, but on close analysis it will probably be found that the third—the moral aspect—is dominant. The "profiteer" is a dite cult economic burden to catch, but here is no doubt of his reception once he is put in the public pillory.
Hitherto, the steadfast refusal of the British Treasury to ask Parliament to tax capital has had a good deal to be said for it. The War Wealth Committee of 1920, to whose labours Mr. Chamberlain apparently referred as a possible model last week, seems to have had an uneasy conviction, throughout its labours, that its task was more Harrovian than Etonian. And though it produced what it hoped would be a workable scheme for taxing capital values that had increased during the war, there was no real enthusiasm about its report. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer promptly turned it down; although, only a couple of months before, he had insisted in his Budget, in the face of considerable criticism. in continuing the war-time Excess Profis Duty—a levy on income. It may perhaps be argued that if the capital levy proposals of 1920 had been put forward during the War, instead of a year ana a-half after the conclusion of hostilities, they might have had a different fate. But that assumption is questionable, because the cause which. brought them to birth was the (as it then seemed) intolerably-high level to which the War, as a whole, had raised the National Debt. That motive only acquired its urgency when the War was over, and the task of clearing up the mess had begun.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.