Sla,—In your issue of June 19th, " Janus " says
that he is perplexed by Lord Wardington's recent speech in the House of Lords, but it seems to me that he misses the point of it by taking an income of £4,000 a year as his example, and by ignoring the words "inescapable liabilities" used by Lord Wardington. A man with a gross income of £4,000 had about f2,800 a year to spend before the war, and now has £1,730. If his commit- ments before the war were on a scale commensurate with a • et income of £2,8o0, it should not prove impossible for him to live on a net income of £1,73o under -war conditions.
A man whose gross income is £25,000 has, however, a very different problem to solve. High as taxation-was before the war, he still had about klo,soo to spend, and his commitments, based on a net income of this inount, have now to be provided for from a net income of about £3,900, since Ezt,too will be paid in tax. As the savings which he can effect on his personal expenditure will, at the most, amount to no more than few hundreds, it is inevitable that the burden of taxation will not only fall on him personally, but with even greater force on those who have 'therm been supported out of his estate.
It seems to me that the fallacy underlying the present method of ssessing tax, at any rate in respect of those who have landed estates, is at the whole of the income derived from the estate is regarded for tax urposes as being the income of one man, whereas, in fact, it may be the le means of support of a large number of complete families. The oblems to be solved under these conditions are no doubt of the most distressing nature, although they may be solved for a few years by
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