§ 62. Mr. Nabarroasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the proportion of £7,000,000, being the cost to the Revenue of reducing the top rates of Surtax in such a fashion that no person is assessed upon income at a higher rate than 15s. in the £, which would return to the Treasury an additional yield from indireot taxation.
§ Mr. Barber:Revenue from indirect taxation is affected by a great variety of factors and it would not be possible to isolate the effect of the change to which my hon. Friend refers.
§ Mr. Nabarroasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will publish a table showing the professional occupation of Surtax payers, including Members of Parliament, appropriately arranged to show the allocation to each of the ten Surtax rate brackets.
§ Sir E. BoyleNo.
§ Mr. Nabarroasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much revenue he would lose in a full year by eliminating the Surtax brackets of 2s. in the £ sterling, from £2,000 to £2,500 of income annually, and 2s. 6d. in the £ sterling, from £2,500 to £3,000 of income annually, the higher rates of surtax then to be reduced commensurately; how many Surtax payers would then be eliminated; and how many would remain.
§ Sir E. Boyle:To raise the Surtax starting point to £3,000 leave the chargeable slices of income above £3,000 153W as they are and reduce all the rates now due on them by 2s. 6d. would cost £103 million in a full year. As for the last part of the Question, the latest year for which figures are available is 1958–59 when it is estimated that 196,000 Surtax payers would have been eliminated and 192,000 left.