§ SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTONasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, under the present circumstances of agricultural depression, he will favourably consider the inequalities with which the income tax is levied under Schedule A, namely, first, upon the gross instead of the net income, thereby making no allowance for agency, repair, or bad debts, as in other schedules; and secondly, upon arrears of income which have not been received, but which the Commissioners of Income Tax are instructed to demand; and, whether, in the financial arrangements of the year, or by a Treasury Minute, as last year in the case of unoccupied farms, he will remove the inequality?
MR. GLADSTONEMy hon. Friend asks me whether, under the present circumstances of agricultural depression, I will favourably consider the inequalities with which the Income Tax is levied under Schedule A. Upon reference to the proceedings that were taken last year, and in former years before the accession of the present Government to Office, for granting certain remissions of Income Tax, I may say that those arrangements—within the last two or three years—were within the competence of the Government. The Question of my hon. Friend is, I am sorry to say, quite of a different order. It descends deep into the arcana of the Income Tax; and if he makes the interior of the structure a subject of study he will find it, not only one of the most puzzling questions, but one of the most difficult to approach of all the economic questions which can present itself to the mind of a Member of Parliament. I do not hesitate to say that to open up the inequalities of the tax levied under Schedule A—which I do not at all dispute; on the contrary, I have stated them in this House, and endeavoured to draw the attention of the House to them as closely as I could—would require us to open up inquiry into the manner in which the Income Tax is levied under the whole Schedule, and it would at once raise questions of the most difficult character in respect to the Schedule. I hope, therefore, my hon. Friend will not expect me to be able to answer the Question as a mere matter of Executive discretion.