On one occasion some twenty Members of Parliament consented to put down this amendment with me, but every attempt to obtain its enactment has failed. Until it is obtained there can be no just graduation of the Income Tax, and tax-payers who declare their incomes under the existing law will continue to pay too much because others pay too little.
Some smaller matters claim our attention.
A minor but not unimportant reform, for which we have to thank Mr Lloyd George, is the concession made to small Income Tax payers who have young children, a concession which the present writer believes he was the first to urge in the House of Commons. The Finance Bill of 1909 (Sect. 68) provided that Income Tax payers with incomes not exceeding £500 should be entitled to exemption from taxation to the amount of £10 for each child under the age of 16 years. The effect of this provision is far-reaching. A clerk with £200 a year and three young children gets the £160 abatement and £30 abatement in respect of his children. His taxable income is thus reduced to £10 and his payment of Income Tax to 7s. 6d.
On the same ground, respect for the principle of ability to pay, the Income Tax law should provide for special abatements in case of the illness of salary earners, special misfortunes, the support of poor relatives, etc. It is found possible to work such provisions in Prussia; it ought to be found possible to do so here.
The importance of a thorough revision of the Income Tax law is growing. The view urged here is that the citizen's subscription to the National Club should not only be justly proportioned to his means, but presented to him intelligibly, and collected without waste or undue interference with business.
The phenomenon of an annual Budget debate has come to be regarded as a necessary Parliamentary evil, but is there any justification for it?
When the nation has decided, through its representatives, for good reasons or for bad reasons, that a certain sum of money must be raised for public purposes, it is not the function of the Chancellor of the Exchequer qua Chancellor of the Exchequer to decide whether the purposes are good or bad, or whether the sum is too large or too small. As a member of the Government, the Finance Minister has, of course, a voice in deciding what sums should be spent and upon what purposes, but, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his duty is not to reason why but to find the money. In the finding of the money, ought there to be, year by year, a long and painful discussion as to how it should be done?
We have also become accustomed to regarding the Budget as a great and glorious secret, to be carefully guarded until the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes his annual speech. Does the tradition of secrecy rest upon necessity? For my part, I call the necessity in question. I affirm that our annual Budget need present no difficulties; that it is not inherently a difficult thing to accomplish; and that the conception of a Budget as a great secret, to be carefully hidden until Budget Day, is an altogether childish conception. There is some excuse for reserving a child's Christmas presents until he wakes up and finds the gifts of Santa Claus in his stocking on the morning of December 25th, but there is no excuse whatever for the ridiculous secrecy with which tradition shrouds the annual Budget statement.