THE TROUBLE-TAX.
A LULL in the excitements of Parliament, public meetings, and outbreaks at home, enables peaceable citizens to hear the unplea- sant rustle of the Income-tax returns, which begin now to flutter about their ears too frequently. Men had made up their minds to pay the tax—it was only paying the bill which the Whigs left un- settled in their lodgings ; honest citizens made up their minds he- roically to the "inquisition" into their affairs ; but the trouble of the returns they did not count upon, and to that there seems no end and ever a fresh beginning. The headings of the forms are so worded that few know precisely what they mean : yet every man is cautioned to fill them accurately, under heavy penalties; and, in his very anxiety to be precise, he puzzles himself yet more than the directions have puzzled him. He finds that the Income-tax returns are also Census returns, only the population is classed in a vague and unusual manner. He finds, too, that when he has made them once, and thought he is rid of the "bother," he has to make more returns in some other parish, and perhaps yet again in a third. His very friends become tax-agents: he has just left papers at home, filled up ; he calls on a friend for whom he is vicar in some employment, and his friend hands him the same papers, only blank, and to be filled up ! He calls on another, and finds that man filling up. The next asks him how he should fill up, be- cause he can't make it out. Another asks him how he himself filled up, merely to tell him that he ought to have stated some- thing, or he ought not to have stated something; that he is bound to do this, which he has not done, or is not bound to do that, which he has done. Worthy friends, whom he has been accustomed to respect, tell him, with a 'sneaking triumph, of the little quibbles by- which they mean to diminish their incomes in the eyes of the Commissioners. All pester him with complaints. And this is before the taxed people have been summoned into the ungracious presence of the inquisitors, or have had to "make up" the extra- ordinary payment in October. The middle class seems fit to fret itself back into Whiggery with disgust at those bothering, long- folded slips of paper, to meddle with which is almost like "going to law" without wishing it. Is there no levying an income-tax without these ill-contrived preliminaries ?
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