The house of Industry : a new estate of the realm

TAXATION A TRADITION 31

Beyond this psychological bias, there is also a feeling that our methods of taxation are out-ofdate, crude, inequitable. “‘ Why on earth,’’ asks the average man, “‘ can’t the amount be charged against the business and be done with it? Why should the State be perpetually grabbing at this or that? When I receive my income, why isn’t it mine for keeps?’’ And so he goes on growling.

The instinctive protest is soundly based and will one day become articulate. It doesn’t matter in the least that other nations are worse off than we. We have our own history of taxation and our own attitude towards it. And we know, but don’t know how we know, that the whole business is a muddle, if not a downright scandal. I state this in moderate language. It is interlaced by the choleric man in the street with remarks about our spendthrift government, our bloated bureaucracy, the wickedness of high wages, the tyranny of the Trade Unions and foreign competition. Let us in mercy forget the expletives.

Now we do not speak in this vein of our ordinary creditors. We like to catch them out over a mistake of sixpence or a shilling—even joke about it. We resolve to chip the beggar when we meet him at the golf club or the Conservative Club, to which every decent business man should belong. When we meet him we spend half-a-crown in drinks. The joke’s worth it, you know.

If, however, we could in our minds bring our obligations to the State into the same category as our ordinary debts and liabilities, the inherited