The Betting Tax HE betting tax came into force on
Monday. Its effect for the first few days has been to cause certain number of bookmakers and backers to Id aloof with a kind of puzzled hesitation. he abstaining bookmakers wanted to watch the perations of their colleagues and see how the public ook the tax before they made up, their minds what to 1 1 to o about it. The abstaining backers kept their money their pockets- because they did not feel sure that hey could get as good- odds as they ought to get or ight get elsewhere after a few days. But to describe hat has happened in this or any other respect as chaos ridiculous. The fact is that the experienced officials the Customs and Excise knew perfectly well how to set p the machinery of the new tax. There may be more ifficulties in collecting this tax than in collecting most thers, but there is no prospect of widespread evasion. So far as-the volume -of betting was reduced from the nnal this week, the result has been gratifying to hose who believed that the tax would restrict gambling. or our part, however, we do not expect this state of ffairs to last very long. The racing world will rapidly dapt itself' to the new conditions. All one can safely y is that the tendency will not be to encourage etting, for the universal effect of taxation is to check he growth of the thing taxed. "Probably there will n be very few outward signs, except the bookmakers' ickets, that the tax is in force. No backer knows ow, .when he- backs a horse at six to one, whether the ds ought not to be seven to one, or even longer. The ruth is that-he wants to gamble in any case ; he enjoys " flutter," and also perhaps fancies his own judgment of a little ; and when the bookmakers universally • ay the tax by shortening the odds (as they probably ill before long), hardly anybody will be conscious of change. The hesitation of the layers on the opening ays was merely caused by their indecision about the t way of paying the 'tax. Should they make the acker pay by deducting it from his winnings, or should t be a case of " fifty-fifty," or should the layer say othing at all about the tax and simply shorten the ds in order to provide a margin for paying it ? bviously the least troublesome and most attractive icy from the point of view of the backers would be Or the layers to shorten the odds and say no more bout it ; and that -is . why we expect this plan to onie universal: When it was known that Mr. Churchill was seriously nsidering putting a betting tax into his Budget, the rincipal objection was that the establishment of licensed tting offices for ready-money betting would be a skive incitement by .:the State to gamble. It was assumed that these houses would be necessary for the control of " street " betting in accordance with the suggestions of the Select Committee. The objection, seemed so formidable that most people thought that. see fr. Churchill would give up the tax rather than face the moral case against him in the House of Commons. .11 Even some of those who, like ourselves, ardently desired a tax on betting on the ground that this terrific waste of money ought to make its contribution to the State, were given pause by the idea of creating opportunities for betting where they had not existed before. It was in these circumstances that the Spectator proposed that the Government should solve the difficulty by leaving street betting alone and confine the operations of the tax to those kinds of betting which were already legal, namely, credit betting with bookmakers in their offices and ready-money betting on racecourses. This plan coincided with what Mr. Churchill actually proposed in the Budget, and it is now the law. Nobody is more conscious than we are, however, that it was a temporary expedient to circumvent the opposition which would certainly have been provoked by a proposal to change the law and legalize street betting. The virtue of Mr. Churchill's scheme is that it covers financially by far the greater part of the betting turnover. But the problem of street betting remains.
Although this surreptitious betting is -for small sums, the total amount of harm done and the suffering of families caused by it are enormous. It ought not to be assumed that the creation of licensed ready-money offices may not in the end be the best way of bringing street betting under control. At present the illegal betting grows steadily. Almost every large workshop in the country is infested by the secret bookmaker, whose operations generally evade all police surveillance. -Sympathy is always expressed with a man accused of street betting, because it is naturally felt that betting is made easy for the well-to-do but difficult for the poor. Prosecution is frankly regarded as persecution. The street bookmakers are extremely insinuating and attentive, and they leave few of the workers free from their persuasions. As Bulwer Lytton said, a gambler's acquaintance is easily made and readily kept—provided that you are willing to gamble with him. The present scheme of taxation, then, is only experimental. It will have to be adapted and enlarged as experience grows, just as drink legislation has been continually changed.
It is impossible to suppress betting. Nobody suggests prohibition. When Mr. Churchill challenged the Labour Members in the House of Commons to say whether they wanted prohibition they were dumb. In these circum- stances taxation is the obvious way of applying dis- couragement and control. Logic requires that the scheme should, somehow or other, be completed. Meanwhile it is entirely misleading to say that the duty cannot be collected or that it is in the least likely to be withdrawn.
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